(This form is also available on the International Union website: https://theiu.org/earth-day/)
The Earth Belongs to Everyone – Building a Culture and Economics of Peace
Date of this communication: _____________________________________________________________
_____ I / We are pleased to endorse the 2024 Equinox Earth Day and intend to ring a bell for peace at the exact moment of equinox at the same time that the Peace Bell will be rung at the United Nations (March 19th, 11:06 pm EST/ New York time) marking the 54th year of this annual event. I understand that the date will be either March 19 or 20st, depending on where I live and that I can calculate time where I live here: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock
_____ Additionally, I / We are organizing an event that will celebrate and educate about the 2024 theme – The Earth Belongs to Everyone – Building a Culture and Economics of Peace. I understand that a registered event can be as modest as a dinner party with family or friends or as ambitious as a public forum in my community that would include speakers, musicians, poets and perhaps a “pop-up” art exhibit.
Please register the event I / We are organizing on the Equinox Earth Day 2024 website:
___________________________________________________________________________________
(Name of event. If undecided please write undecided.)
Name and organizational affiliation: __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Email: ______________________________________________________________________________
Phone: ______________________________________________________________________________
City and Country: ______________________________________________________________________
_____ Please send me information about how I / We can launch an Economics for Peace project in our community / town / city.
Return this form to: EquinoxEarthDay@gmail.com or Mary Carlin, 238 E. 58th St. #24, New York, NY 10022
Quotes from Equinox Earth Day founder John McConnell:
“We need to find ideas that can generate the greatest cooperation for the greatest good on our planet, that’s what I tried to do with Earth Day, the Earth Trustee Agenda, Minute for Peace and the Earth Magna Charta.”
“Environmental efforts by themselves will leave us in ruins unless we stop war, unless we promote peace, and unless we have more economic justice.”
“Among the equal rights of men is the right to an equal share in nature’s bounty a right of each man to his planetary inheritance – his share of land, water, minerals or an appropriate equivalent in food, housing, or other benefits…. No one can, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity, or any other man’s posterity, of the right to his portion of Earth.”
Equinox Earth Day Founder John McConnell and Earth Rights
John McConnell was an idealist, a visionary and a peacemaker who coined the term Earth Day in 1968, proposed its celebration on the March equinox to the City of San Francisco in October, 1969 and announced it in November at a UNESCO Conference. San Francisco hosted the first Earth Day on March 21, 1970.
Since then the Earth Society Foundation, which McConnell co-founded with Margaret Mead, has hosted an annual event at the United Nations where the Peace Bell is rung at the exact moment of the equinox followed by moments of prayer, music, meditation and visualization of peace, harmony and well-being for all.
Margaret Mead, UN Secretary-General U Thant, President Ford, and thirty-three Nobel laureates supported Earth Day and thirty-six worldwide dignitaries signed McConnell’s Earth Day Proclamation, supporting Earth Day on the March Equinox, an annual planetary holiday linking people everywhere without regard to politics, culture, national borders or religion. The Equinox is when the planet is in equipoise of equal day and night representing worldwide balance and harmony.
The theme for the March 2024 Earth Day celebration is The Earth Belongs to Everyone: Building a Culture and Economics of Peace. This focus draws upon McConnell’s thoughts, work and writings about EARTH RIGHTS. In 1968 McConnell wrote his “Planetary Inheritance Declaration” concerning the “rights and responsibilities of all people with respect to Earth’s land, sea, minerals, oil and other natural resources”. He urged the UN to establish a “Natural Resources Royalties Pool” that would collect money from any individual, corporation or country that might take an excess of their rightful portion, then distribute those funds to all of Earth’s people which would help to eliminate many economic sources of discord that lead to war.
The Henry George Institute welcomed McConnell’s message at a May 1996 seminar with literature stating that “Mr. McConnell has long shared Henry George’s vision of the Earth as the common heritage of all people and he advocates the public collection of land rent as a way to actualize this all-important relationship.” The seminar honored John’s co-authorship, with Alanna Hartzok of the International Union for Land Value Taxation, of a paper that described the success of this “earth rights” tax reform in Hartzok’s home state of Pennsylvania.
Another ally was Walter J. Hickel, eight-year governor of Alaska and U.S. Secretary of the Interior under President Richard Nixon. In his book, Crisis in the Commons: The Alaska Solution (2002) Hickel stressed the need to manage and share the commons as a means to prevent poverty. He helped establish the Alaska Permanent Fund and Dividend Program that has distributed annual oil rent dividend payments to each resident of the state including children. In 2022 each person received $3,284.
The above background information is from Peace, Justice, Care of Earth: The Vision of John McConnell, Founder of Earth Day, a biography by Robert M. Weir and Earth Day: Vision for Peace Justice, and Earth Care: My Life and Thought at Age 96 by John McConnell, edited by John C. Munday. See also The Earth Belongs to Everyone.
Also, note that the UN Center for Human Settlements – HABITAT – is an advocate for EARTH RIGHTS tax policies as stated in several of their Action Plans adopted by consensus of all UN Member States. See for example the Vancouver Action Plan section D.1(a)s that says:
Excessive profits resulting from the increase in land value due to development and change in use are one of the principal causes of the concentration of wealth in private hands. Taxation should not be seen only as a source of revenue for the community but also a powerful tool to encourage development of desirable locations, to exercise a controlling effect on the land market and to redistribute to the public at large the benefits of the unearned increase in land values.
For further information about how you can launch EARTH RIGHTS projects where you live contact: EarthRightsProjects@gmail.com or call 1-717-357-7617