WASHINGTON -- A 1990 global celebration involving rock concerts, a worldwide television special and a U.S.-Soviet-Chinese expedition up Mount Everest will mark the 20th anniversary of Earth Day, the 1970 event that launched the environmental movement, organizers said Tuesday.
Plans for the massive effort were announced at a news conference by Earth Day 20, a non-profit foundation that has enlisted Jesse Jackson, actor James Stewart, Soviet commentator Vladmir Pozner and dozens of other leading entertainment, media, political and scientific figures.
Environmentalist Barry Commoner told reporters the 1990 event is intended to build an international grass-roots movement to 'galvanize political will for worldwide environmental action' on such emerging concerns as global warming and the depletion of Earth's protective ozone layer.
Commoner noted millions of Americans participated in demonstrations and other events in the first Earth Day celebration on April 22, 1970, which helped create the political momentum that led to enactment of landmark clean air and water laws and the creation of the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
'Earth Day in 1970 generated a groundswell of public concern about environmental issues in the United States,' Commoner said. 'Earth Day 20 in 1990 must become a tidal wave, worldwide.'
While they plan to help set up local demonstrations in thousands of communities around the world, organizers said high-visibility media events will play a big role in making the celebration truly international in scope.
For example, organizers hope to hold simultaneous concerts in London, Los Angeles and Tokyo that would be hooked together by satellite, similar to the 'Live Aid' concerts put on several years ago to aid African famine victims.
In addition, plans are under way for a live television program that would dramatize environmental problems on land and sea. The program is expected to include live broadcasts from an experimental submarine in an deep-sea trench as well as from U.S., Soviet and Chinese mountain climbers atop Mount Everest.
