Normally, this calendar notes the birth dates of important conservationists and environmentalists. But today is noted because it was the date when three famous authors died—William Shakespeare, Miquel de Cervantes, and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. Not only did they die on the same date, April 23, but they all died on the very same day, April 23, 1616.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) chose to acknowledge their deaths and the foundational value of books to our civilization by creating World Book and Copyright Day in 1995. The current Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, represented the importance of books this way:
“When we celebrate books, we celebrate activities – writing, reading, translating, publishing – which help individuals to raise and fulfil themselves; and we celebrate, in a fundamental way, the freedoms that make them possible. Books are at the intersection of some of the most essential human freedoms, primarily freedom of expression and freedom to publish. These are fragile freedoms. Faced by many challenges, from the questioning of copyright and cultural diversity to the physical threats looming over authors, journalists and publishers in many countries, these freedoms are also denied, even today, when schools are attacked, and manuscripts and books destroyed.”
So, I thought today was a good time to remind us all of those conservation and environmental books that have had huge influences on our approach to sustainability. In the late 1990s, an internet book review service asked a variety of people—writers, reporters, professors and plain readers—what environmental books they thought most influential.
Guess what? The number one most influential book, mentioned by 83% of respondents, was Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring! (learn more about her) Not surprised, are you? At number two was the annual State of the World books produced by the Worldwatch Institute. Third was Soft Energy Paths, by Amory Lovins. A whole shelf could be covered by Amory Lovins’ contributions to sustainable energy (learn more about him). Fourth was Paul Hawken’s Natural Capitalism, a book that discusses how our economic systems are dependent on nature systems. Another Hawken book, The Ecology of Commerce, came in at sixth.
Read MoreApril is Keep America Beautiful Month
Back in 1971, The Keep America Beautiful organization teamed up with the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts to create Keep American Beautiful Day. It was expanded in 1982 to a week, and then to the entire month of April in 1984. As spring takes hold of the weather and the landscape awaken with the greening of trees and grasses, the blooming of wildflowers and the melodies of nesting songbirds, we, too, ought to take special notice of our beautiful environment—and do something to, as they say, keep it beautiful.
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