Send all your eco-inquiries to Jennifer Grayson at eco.etiquette@gmail.com. Questions may be edited for length and clarity.
This week, I had originally planned to write a piece about Earth Day optimism. The column was supposed to highlight the most exciting and uplifting environmental news I could find (Evangelicals are becoming tree huggers! More celebrities are going vegan!), all in the hopes of inspiring you, my dear Earth Day enthusiasts, to keep fighting the good fight.
But you know what? I really don't feel like it.
I never expected being green to be easy, of course, but the news as of late has been so abysmal that even eternal eco-optimists like myself want to stick their head in the sand.
US greenhouse gas emissions are on the rise once again. One in 88 American children now has autism (with pollution being named a possible cause). Tornado megastorms are ripping across the Midwest faster than you can ask, Is this related to climate change? (Scientists are hesitating on this one, but interestingly, the American public isn't.)
Then, there are the recent setbacks; the ones that make it seem like no matter how many of us cry out for change, we'll never be able to rise above political infighting and the powers that be (Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Chem).
Senate Republicans blocked the bill to eliminate tax breaks for rich oil companies before it could even come to an honest vote. Despite intense consumer demand, the FDA chose not to ban endocrine-disrupting chemical BPA from food packaging. A million Americans signed a petition supporting the labeling of GMOs and were promptly ignored (FDA, again).
So forgive me if I don't feel like having butterflies painted on my daughter's face at our local Earth Day celebration this weekend.
I know, I know: The founding of Earth Day in 1970 was instrumental in opening people's eyes to the environmental devastation we had inflicted. It was the impetus to pivotal pollution-fighting legislation like the Clean Air Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. More than a billion people worldwide are expected to participate in Earth Day this year, which is remarkable, if by sheer number alone.
But here's the reality: After planting a tree at a local event or recycling their old electronics, the majority of people (companies, our government) will go back to business as usual. They'll make choices that are beneficial to the environment when it's convenient or profitable; they'll look the other way when it's not.
Why? Because we haven't set the stakes high enough. In fact, we've missed the mark entirely. Save the planet, goes that familiar refrain each Earth Day.
But it isn't the planet that's at stake this Earth Day; it's us.
I say it's high time we reposition the environmental argument. Our planet is indeed in peril, yes, but only the planet as we know it, in its beautiful, lush, human life–supporting state. Global temperatures are rising, polar ice caps are melting, and wildlife extinction is happening on a scale unprecedented in the earth's history.
But the fact remains that regardless of what we do -- burn through every last bit of fossil fuel, fill the oceans with trash, raze what little rainforest we have left -- the earth will endure. The human race, however, may not.
Our planet has sustained cataclysmic events before, after all, like the asteroid collision 65 million years ago that likely wiped out the dinosaurs and up to 70 percent of all living plants and animals.
It's also made it through times as hot as anthropogenic global warming is likely to cause, like during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum some 56 million years ago. (Though there were evidently an obscene amount of insects. Something for the few humans who are left to endure daily and nightly 100-plus degree temperatures to look forward to.)
If more people took a moment to absorb the brutal reality that this is, in fact, a fight to save our life on earth as we know it, including the lives -- nay, the mere existence -- of our children and grandchildren, maybe we would stop bickering over regulations for power plants.
It sounds scary, but that's because it is scary. Nice as the sentiment of Earth Day may be, people rarely make sweeping change in the name of altruism. How much more effective would it be if we changed the name of Earth Day to Save the Human Race Day?
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Government has to be involved in the green economy if we are going to survive as a human race.
The Koch Brothers and their Tea Party-funding oil front group, Americans For Prosperity, for example were suing New York's Governor, Andrew Cuomo, for taking part in RGGI (Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative), a cap-and-trade program that has forced corporate polluters to pay, and that has so far raised over $700 million for renewable energy and green jobs.
Well, that's what Earth Day should be. Earth day should be that moment. NOT simply a day for planting a tree, but a day to go deeper and find that moment.
In fact, those Hallmark cards are not a sign of anything at all. I've never received an "Earth Day" greeting card from anyone, and never heard of anyone sending or receiving such a card, so let's not take that seriously.
Well, its like this - if the dems (and specifically Obama) stood up and made a plea to save the human race .... within hours the T-publicons would have spread talking points to every corner of the country lambasting the human race and introducing legislation to get rid of them as soon as possible. Everybody who is anybody would be in front of a camera telling the world what losers the human race is and how they are communists, marxists, socialists, muslims and none were born in America.
http://www.chicagoclimateaction.org/pages/adaptation/11.php
adapt.
Their lobbyists are bullies, and our congress cries uncle too soon and for
too long.
We the people-will have to do it on our own. (And thanks for the reply Jennifer)
Natural and wild ecosystems are synonymous with the real, living Earth and all the reasons Earth gives and supports all life, and ecosystems exist only because of their plant and animal biodiversity. The preceding sentence explains it all, the deep green and life on the Earth, but modern man is rapidly killing ecosystems and biodiversity because he doesn't comprehend how Earth is a living, life creating planet. Man needs to see what is a living, life giving Earth and what is as dead as the dust on the moon.
Be thankful for the deep green, for forests and trees, butterflies and birds, rivers, fish and seas, grasslands and chaparral, bison, bears and wolves because it is all one, the living body of Earth, ecosystems and the plant and animal biodiversity that creates the one whole.
If climate change came in the shape of a heinous, red eyed, thirty ton ill mannered monster wreaking but a tenth (a hundredth, a thousandth) of the damage currently being done, we'd move heaven and earth to stop it. We're genetically programmed to understand ill mannered monsters. But a colorless gas being added to the atmosphere? Well again: what's for supper?
I'm not sure the answer. Pitch in, keep fighting: yes, But I suspect nature is simply repeating one of its oldest ongoing experiments. They come and go, these animal species, yet we're somehow forgetting we're just another not so overly remarkable member of the crowd being tested.
Man exists only because of Earth's wild and natural, life giving surface or ecosystems, and ecosystems, exist only because of their native species of plant and animal biodiversity.
I'll be planting my lime tree this Sunday. Would do it sooner but decided to wait to commemorate the occasion.
I recycle more and more on a regular basis. When the city expands it's acceptable recyclables for the blue bin, I study the list and recycle more. I'm cooking more from scratch and buying from the bulk bins to reduce packaging.
I vermipost.
I ride my bike when I can.
It's a matter of attitude.
This week I'm doing a lesson on Earth Day and Arbor Day with my elementary school classes. They already know quite a bit and it's nice to see the enthusiasm. That's why we need to keep celebrating Earth Day. Not for those whose participation is less than stellar now. But for our children, so they can grow up to be better stewards than we have been. Every generation gets better but we still have miles to go.
It isn't, and I don't believe it was ever intended to be.
If Earth Day has drifted away for some folks to become a "celebration," that's not the fault of Earth Day.
Earth Day doesn't call for celebrations but for observances that lead us all to greater awareness, greater involvement, and greater commitment.
And that need to observe Earth Day doesn't diminish just because the news about the planet has been grim lately.
But not to worry. Here's what would give Earth Day my undivided attention: A series of actions that would make it impossible for Keystone XL to be built. The northern half, especially.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PzfBVgssgQ