🌲 Happy Earth Day 2019 🌲

Photo courtesy of DonkeyHotey Flickr Page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/6143809369

Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

The old button from the Environmental Club days which I just happened to find on Earth Day! It is a little beat up (particularly the ends of the ribbon), but no worse for the wear, I think. And it is one of the few items that I have left from those days, so it carries a lot of great memories for me! Nothing Changes Until You Do!

Here is a picture of a very similar logo, with the same message, that was on the t-shirt that I purchased from the BCC Environmental Club and, if memory serves me correctly, may even have helped to make. There were a few projects like that which club members, myself included, were regularly involved with. It has been so long, however, that I no longer recall specifically if I actually helped to make these or not, although I do believe so, since I remember seeing the process of the t-shirts being dyed. In any case, I loved this t-shirt, and have kept it ever since, even if I do not regularly wear it. Since it was part of my experience with the BCC Environmental Club days, as well as more generally having an environmental theme, it seemed appropriate to share it here. 

"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed."

~Mahatma Gandhi

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."

  

~John F. Kennedy  


“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”

~ Chief Si’ahl (Seattle) 

“Now polluters are looked upon as ordinary Joes just doing their jobs. In the future, they will be looked upon as swine”

~ Kurt Vonnegut

Well, today is Earth Day.

This is one of my favorite holidays, even though this also happens to be one of the youngest and, thus, one with some of the least amount of recognition and traditions, at least for now. Hopefully, someday, people might actually take it more seriously, and at least begin to appreciate what this Mother Earth of ours offers us.

Nothing short of life itself.

Yet, for now, this sentiment is more often met with mockery, at least in contemporary American culture. It is often viewed with serious skepticism and, frankly, often times mockery.

It should not be. It was originally designed to make us aware of the damage that we are doing to our world through our notions of progress. Pumping junk into air and the seas and the land, so that we can enjoy more luxuries than ever before. That is what passes for progress these days. 

There was a time when we used to actually believe that we were building a better world, something worth sacrificing for. It seems these days that we all know that we should approach any sense of people trying to build for a better world with caution. There have been so many failed ideas, not to mention outright scams and frauds, to say nothing of the disasters that have come of these. The kind of world that we have created has proven to be disastrous on many levels. After all, does it really shock anyone that there were massive terrorist attacks targeting mostly churches throughout Sri Lanka yesterday, on Easter Sunday, the most sacred day in the Christian calendar? Really, it feels like these kinds of things, which truly would have shocked people to the core maybe even as recently as half a century ago, now almost seem like regular stories in the news. This is the age when corporations generously donate land to a community, and only later is it discovered that there are chemicals under that land, and cancer rates are shooting up. Just last week, after Notre-Dame went up in flames, France's leading wealthy families proudly announced that they would be donating something like one billion dollars towards rebuilding, and then asked for a similar amount back for tax breaks. In other words, they want to take the credit as well-meaning and noble philanthropists, but they also want their money back, which is to say that regular taxpayers would be footing the bill. Slick, for sure. But nothing noble about that, no great sentiments towards humanity in general. Just selfishness. 

Indeed, that is why so many people these days approach seeming well-meaning, or even noble ideas or notions are viewed with extreme skepticism. Almost everyone seems to need to develop a sense of skepticism or, at best, measured optimism, when it comes to bigger ideas these days. 

Clearly, many people need to work a little better at that. After all, look at who is currently in the Oval Office here in the United States. The highest office in the land, and probably the most powerful office in the world, is currently occupied by a known con artist, someone who believes in drilling for oil and fracking and clearing more forests to produce more beef, so that he and millions of others in a rapidly growing population can chow down on cheap meat products, regardless of how much damage experts have revealed it does to this planet.

What does he care? He will be long gone by the time that the full impact of climate change will be felt and, even if he is somehow still around, he has his billions to ensure some measure of protection and tranquility in his life. This man is the most selfish, narcissistic individual imaginable, a megalomaniac to such a degree, that he often seems like a walking, talking, breathing parody. I still have trouble not viewing him as some kind of a joke, albeit an extremely cruel one, perhaps one that our stupid society is playing on Mother Earth. 

Mother Earth deserves so much better.

Slowly but surely, these seems to be an awakening. Some people even describe this as "Woke." Increasingly, this is how to refer to people who are at least aware that there is a world out there, and that we need to be aware of others, and not merely concerned with the pursuit of our own selfish desires. There are higher purposes than simply to fixate on our own greed, and the rise of the face of greed to the White House cannot forever keep this growing conscientiousness, or "wokeness," if you will, from rising.

Native Americans understood the urgency of having a balance with the Earth. They were mocked then, and basically killed off and/or forced to join the very society that they knew to be sick. Yet, some of their wisdom has survived, and many of us - although clearly not all of us by a long-shot - are beginning to gain awareness that they understood something, that they possessed a certain wisdom that our crass and obsessive consumer culture failed to see, much less appreciate.

Obviously, that level of skepticism towards Native American wisdom continues today. 

Still, we have to continue to fight for it. Because Mother Earth deserves better than the way that we treat her. I heard somewhere recently that people - by which, I think, they meant people in western, advanced countries - only seem willing to go along with things when they clearly will get something out of it. That may indeed be true, even if it is also sad.

Yet, so be it. If that is what we have become, then it is better to accept this reality, and then try to work within it's framework, then to ignore it or pretend it is otherwise. We really cannot afford to only believe in what we want to believe in. Look at how much trouble this has gotten is into in the first place.

So, let us try and keep Earth Day as at least one sacred day, when people accept that the Earth is indeed life itself. Without the planet as we know it, there is no life. If we continue on as we are going, simply put, the strains will be too much, and life as we know it on this planet will be choked off, because our modern lifestyles are, simply put, not sustainable for any great length of time. 

The threat is real. But for now, at least, so is hope. Hope that we can indeed collectively wake up on time to preserve at least the best part of what Mother Earth has blessedly provided us with: life itself. Earth Day always falls in the spring, right as the last vestiges of winter here in the northern hemisphere begin to fade, and a literal season of new life is ushered forth. 

We have to begin somewhere, even if it is just one day. Let it be this day, and let what traditions have been established continue, but let new traditions begin, both for Earth Day, and more generally and completely, so that we begin to make more of a difference.

And let this be a blessed Earth Day to any and all who read this.

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