Whole Earth Button

This button commemorates the birth of the modern environmental movement. After dropping 100 micrograms of LSD and heading up to the rooftop of his North Beach apartment, Stewart Brand had a remarkable epiphany: if we saw a photograph of the whole Earth from space, it would show how fragile and vulnerable our planet is. Might we act differently on Earth? Enthused and full of ideas, he says, “I made buttons and dressed like a hippie street clown, wearing a sandwich board that had a paranoid rallying cry, Why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?” Eventually, NASA finally released the photograph, which became an icon for the modern environmental movement. The following year, “Earth Day” was founded, using the photo of the whole earth as its symbol.