Interviewing Denis Hayes Photo: Allan Baer

Also at the meeting, we met a chair and CEO of Earth Day, Denis Hayes. Earth Day is a project that encourages people to help in taking a step into making our world more sustainable. He's played a huge role on Earth Day since the beginning of the project. There was so much to say and so little time to say it, but Denis told us about his evolvement in Earth Day and how successful Earth Day '99 was. There were thousands of Earth Day 1999 events across america and other countries around the world. Earth Day '99 gatherings included the Earth Day 2000 Worldwide Campaign at the UN in New York, 5,000 volunteers at Earth Works in Seattle, 10,000 people at Earth Day Rhode Island, 10,000 people at Earth Day Austin, Texas, 25,000 people at Contra Costa Earth day, California, 35,000 people at various other events in the San Francisco Bay area, and 50,000 people at Earth Day coalition Clevland.

Since the US is one of the worst polluters in the world, the Earth Day US Campaign is focussing on achieving a transition in the US to clean, renewable sources of energy. He also told us that Earth Day 2000's "Worldwide Clean Energy Campaign," will highlight successful alternative energy programs and use the momentum of Earth Day 2000 to speed the transition away from polluting fossil fuels. We also got some information at the Earth Day website. (www.earthday.com)

Here's some info that we got off the website.

"The Clean Energy Campaign will:

• Create a global network of groups who work on energy,
  development, global warming, and related issues.
  
• Publicize clean energy success stories by highliting the
  strategies at project, community, and policy levels that made the
  successes possible.
  
• Push for changes in project funding and national policies by urging the World Bank, national governments, and other significant players to redirect funding toward clean energy and away from fossil fuels.
  

The Campaign will catalyze change of community, national and international levels. Recognizing the United States' wasteful use of energy and disproportionate contribution to global warming, Earth Day 2000's "New Energy for a New Era" campaign will mobilize the american people to address energy issues. The campaign will build bridges between developed countries, who must become more efficient and make the transition to clean energy options, and developing countries, who have the opportunity to leapfrog over industrial-age fossil fuels and move directly to the next generation of energy technology."

We would like to thank Denis Hayes for telling us about the project and we hope that Earth Day 2000 will be a great success.

• If you would like to learn more about the upcoming Earth Day and even register to take part in it, you can go to "www.earthday.com."

by Lauren Cipollone & Mia Casey