Some protested by art, others by sound, and others by sharing hopes and calling ourselves and others to take action on behalf of a cleaner, greener (and bluer) Earth. The fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day mobilized many to do something (mostly online) despite the lockdowns keeping most of us in our homes. Pope Francis called for ecological conversion. Bill McKibben spoke and wrote incessantly, slamming fossil fuel subsidies left and right. NASA gave us images of Earth’s observing fleet.
Who heard the calls, read the articles, saw the images? What impact will they have on the world at large?
The top news stories around the world this week were certainly not about ecology, environment, or a changing climate. They were about coronavirus, economic recovery programs (or lack thereof) for nations or the world, hoped for vaccines, international disagreements around one thing or another, the pronouncements of Donald Trump, and the other kinds of things we would expect any other week during a coronavirus pandemic.
The 50th anniversary came and went. We did our part. We look forward to doing much more in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. But what is the action that will shift things in the right direction, the straw that will break the proverbial camel’s back, the nudge and tweak that will trigger the revolution we need? What are the “social tipping points” that will set social-ecological systems onto a corrected course, stabilize the Earth’s climate, and generally fulfill the goals of the movement that started in the 1960s — of finding a new and healthy balance between human needs and the vital needs of the life systems that support us?
None of those goals are overly radical; they are as anthropocentric as any in that they place our, human needs at the center of things. They simply redefine the human in a way that understands our dependence on all the other living things and systems that make this a lively and thriving planet. (That’s a redefinition that’s necessary only because we’ve forgotten what we used to know, over millennia.) There are certainly more radical things we can say and do, some of them happening today (online, of course). There are certainly very difficult questions of justice that require resolving alongside, and quite possibly before, the other ones (of climate and ecology) can effectively be addressed.
So, here we are.
(To which one can, and should, also reply, “Who, we?”)
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Join Earth Day Live today: https://www.earthdaylive2020.org/
#SoundtheCall for the 50th Earth Day: https://youtu.be/lZPg3CPbahU
Image credit: http://www.trustyourstruggle.com/a/work/public-art/ (and click below)