The Earth Keeps Spinning
One of my favorite Facebook posts of the pandemic was the one in which the human world exclaims, “There’s no way we can shut everything down in order to lower emissions, slow climate change, and protect the environment.” Mother Nature’s reply: “Here’s a virus. Practice.”
Right on!
One of the happy collateral consequences of the COVID-19 catastrophe (and it is, indeed, a true calamity) is the environmental result of our worldwide skid to a near-halt. Smog has cleared away in China, New York City, and many other places. Water is running clear in the Venice canals and elsewhere for the first time in recent memory. The upper atmosphere is calmer without tens of thousands of aircraft stirring it like milk in coffee all the time. Ambient noise is noticeably lower: wow...I can hear myself think. People are taking long walks. Society’s rush and bustle has been absent. Certainly (and regrettably), the loss of commerce and industry is a deep blow, possibly fatal to some businesses. But as the days pass, there has blossomed, courtesy of forces greater than us all, space to honor some wonderful, quiet lessons.
A clear Venetian canal.
They come just in time for the 50th anniversary of the international celebration of the venerable Earth Day on April 22. As with anyone who has the luck to reach late middle age, Earth Day may seem to some to be a little long in the tooth, tattered, old fashioned, passé. Indeed, watching the wholesale dismantling in the past several years of many of the initiatives that sprang from that first Earth Day in 1970 has been profoundly discouraging.
But we cannot lose sight of the popular success of that day, which drew ten percent of the US population (20 million Americans) to participate and unite for the then-emerging cause of environmentalism. It was “a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, urban dwellers and farmers, business and labor leaders,” according to the Earth Day website [Source: earthday.org/history] Within a few months of April 22, 1970, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was announced, followed shortly by enormous initiatives, such as the Clean Water, Clean Air, and Endangered Species Acts.
The first Earth Day march, 1970.
For the 20th anniversary in 1990, Earth Day deliberately went global. More than 200 million people showed up in 141 countries. Spearheaded (once again) by the movement’s original organizer, Denis Hayes, celebrations that year raised environmental issues onto the world stage. It led, among other things, to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, opened for signature at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero in 1992 and ratified in 1994. (The Paris Agreement came later, in 2015, from which the current US administration has seen fit to withdraw.)
Why do some people appreciate the need to protect, heal, save the planet? And why do some poo-poo the movement? I fail to understand how it is possible to deny the fact of climate change. The science is there. It is real, and it is happening. Now. It’s not going to go away on its own. Yet political and industrial lethargy about making effective change persists as the world teeters under our collective weight and actions.
We who care about the cause need to re-find our voices. It’s not easy, when cynics deride and dismiss efforts by people like me, saying how I’m “just” a treehugger. To them, it’s a pejorative. It’s a bullying tactic. It’s mean.
Personally, I’m proud to embrace the ethic of environmentalism. Yes, I care about my mother, the one who has been showing us lately what can happen if we humans would just stop messing our own nest. I’m not optimistic about what will happen as soon as the widespread constrictions on movement are lifted; knowing the human race, we will go back to business as usual despite the lessons being given.
Saving the planet feels so...big. Overwhelming. I get that. But maybe in the worldwide effort to battle COVID-19, some irrefutable evidence will be gained about the environmental wreckage humans incur upon the world.
The difference between a good day and a bad day of smog in China.
Would you take time to support Earth Day on April 22? Offer it a hearty salute for its fifty years of work on behalf of us all. The impending urgency is real. “The commitment of federal and state leaders to any shared fundamental principles [for environmental protection] has eroded,” says the Michigan chapter of Sierra Club. Yet, as Denis Hayes said at his first Earth day, “If the environment is a fad, it will be our last fad.”
Is this what we want for our descendants? Not me. Here are some ways to engage with the day and, hopefully, the need to protect our environment:
Go to the Earth Day website (earthday.org) and check out the planned activities. Some can be done this week, with social distancing.
Write letters to your political reps, both local and federal. Thank the ones who “get” it. Hold the others accountable. It’s not hard. Challenge yourself to write one letter (or email) a week.
Pick up your “nest” – even the part that’s in public spaces. Document your efforts with the movement’s hashtag, #TrashTag.
Go outside. Take a walk. When you are in nature (even urban nature) you are healed. Maybe this healing can help prompt you to act.
Make every day Earth Day. Go to earthday.org/earth-day-tips/ for 46 tips to make a difference every day.
One of many quiet streets in my hometown.
Can we heed, even a little bit, the wonderful, quiet lessons of these pandemic weeks? I sure hope so.
[Note: please share this blog widely among your loved ones, and encourage them to take part in Earth Day, even after the fact. It’s ok to make every day Earth Day!]
