EARTH DAY OBSERVANCE (APRIL-22)
April 22 marks the 42nd annual Earth Day observance. In recent years, the week running up to Earth Day has become increasingly filled with a riotous mix of news that ranges from inspired initiatives to thinly veiled partisanship and shameless exploitation. As a journalist who covers energy, environment and sustainability issues, I get many of these pronouncements sent directly to me, and others just scream out as I look for interesting stories. Here, for your reading pleasure and horror, are some of the most notable and notorious events and declarations linked to Earth Day. I’m sure you’ll see more—and if you want people to know about them, add a link in the Comments section below.
EARTHCARE celebrates Earth Day, 2012. Looking back over the last 24 years, we are proud to see that we were able to reach many students and teachers in the Northern Bahamas as well as members of the public. From the first 2nd grade class that we addressed in 1988 on Climate change and Ozone Depletion to the teens we meet in 2012 who are empowered by the Governor’s General Youth Award programme to clean up their environment and pressure their parents to recycle it has been a rewarding time. It is a good feeling yet there is so much more work to be done and more people to reach.In April EARTHCARE is speaking to service clubs, such as the Rotary Club at Sunrise, Pilot Club of Freeport and the Rotary Club of Lucaya on Grand Bahama on Coastal Awareness month on behalf of the Sustainable EcoTourism Committee of the Grand Bahama Ministry of Tourism & Aviation office, a part of the national Coastal Awareness committee headed by Earlston McPhee of the Nassau Ministry of Tourism and Aviation.Also in April EARTHCARE will be participating the Caribbean Endemic Bird Festival between April 22nd and May 22nd. In March EARTHCARE donated the Volume VI of the SWOT (State of the World’s Ocean Turtles) to add to the previous volumes that we donated to the schools of Grand Bahama. We thank the Ministry of Education in Freeport’s, Herbert Marshall for seeing that all of the books were distributed when we got the grant from SWOT and also this year. In February, 2012 EARTHCARE and the Sustainable EcoTourism Committee put up a World Wetlands Day exhibit at the Freeport Post Office. Educational materials were made available to the public during that exhibit. We thank Debbie Pennerman and her helpful staff at the Post Office for kindly accommodating us once again. The theme this year was: Wetland Tourism, A Great Experience, Responsible tourism supports wetlands and people.
Actually, the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. For several years, it had been troubling me that the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country. Finally, in November 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to put the environment into the political "limelight" once and for all. The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the President. The President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in September 1963. For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the issue onto the national political agenda. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day.
I continued to speak on environmental issues to a variety of audiences in some twenty-five states. All across the country, evidence of environmental degradation was appearing everywhere, and everyone noticed except the political establishment. The environmental issue simply was not to be found on the nation's political agenda. The people were concerned, but the politicians were not. After President Kennedy's tour, I still hoped for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, called "teach-ins," had spread to college campuses all across the nation. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me - why not organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment? I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.
At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air - and they did so with spectacular exuberance. For the next four months, two members of my Senate staff, Linda Billings and John Heritage, managed Earth Day affairs out of my Senate office. Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the astonishing proliferation of environmental events: "Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation's campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam...a national day of observance of environmental problems...is being planned for next spring...when a nationwide environmental 'teach-in'...coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned...."
It was obvious that we were headed for a spectacular success on Earth Day. It was also obvious that grassroots activities had ballooned beyond the capacity of my U.S. Senate office staff to keep up with the telephone calls, paper work, inquiries, etc. In mid-January, three months before Earth Day, John Gardner, Founder of Common Cause, provided temporary space for a Washington, D.C. headquarters. I staffed the office with college students and selected Denis Hayes as coordinator of activities. Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.
Prof. John Kurakar
No comments:
Post a Comment