Today, Wednesday, April 22, 2020, is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, and this year we’re not mingling with our friends and co-workers around our various booths in a Santa Barbara city park. This makes many of us sad. But there’s another way to look at it. Something far more serious is taking place, and it is this:
We’ve all hit the Pause Button. We can’t gather in groups in a city park. We can’t view our work or our wares. We’ve had to stop. The entire world has had to stop.
The COVID-19 virus is making us stay home and search inside ourselves on many levels. We at Heal the Ocean feel it’s an opportune time to use this period well. While we shelter in place, with no busy-ness to distract us, let us think: the Virus has united the entire planet. Not one Continent, Country, City, County, Region – not one Person – has been spared. There is no white/black, red/brown; Left/Right; Conservative/Liberal; Democrat/Republican – we are all connected. We have been forced to seek an answer together. The vaccine developed in one corner of the Earth will benefit everyone on Earth.
How do we create a vaccine for Climate Change? How do we spare humanity from the wipeout we would most certainly experience when Nature rebels and spits us out? All of us! When this Pandemic is over, as it will eventually be, how are we going to proceed? Today we have turned off belching factories, smoke chimneys, cars, trains, and planes. The sky is blue in China, so radical the children are asking their parents, “What happened to the sky?” In India, one can see the Himalayas for the first time in years. Greenhouse gas emissions have been cut by as much as 88%, and it happened instantly, without global infighting and political wars.
The bottom left shows the San Gabriel Mountains on April 14, 2020.
The right images show the India Gate war memorial in New Delhi, India, is pictured on October 17, 2019 (above) and on April 8, 2020 after a 21-day nationwide lockdown (below).
Accessed through Bored Panda.
Source: Sentinel-5P satellite data processed by Descartes Labs, showing reduction in NO2 gas. Accessed through The New York Times March 22, 2020, "Traffic and Pollution Plummet as U.S. Cities Shut Down for Coronavirus"
We are stopped, and the Earth is quietly waiting for our answer. Will we go back to business as usual, or will we use human ingenuity to re-create how we do things to keep the clean air, the view of the Himalayas, the enormous cuts in greenhouse emissions? We need a WPA such as Franklin Roosevelt enacted to create work for 8.5 million Americans in 1935, during the bleakest years of the Great Depression.
In WPA II, innovative minds could possibly come up with 21st century solutions that provide millions upon millions of jobs to create new modes of energy, transportation, communication and food production – for the World.
This is the most important Earth Day we will see in our lifetime. Let us use it well.
CEC Takes the Earth Day Festival Online
The Community Environmental Council (CEC) is taking its annual Earth Day Festival digital this year with the #TogetherWeEarthRise Earth Day Live Festival. Starting at noon today, Wednesday, April 22, the digital festival will stream live from SBEarthDay.org with live musical acts and great conversations with environmental speakers.
Click here to learn more and join in on the festivities!
Things You Can Do at Home:
Five Minutes or Less: Sign Leonardo DiCaprio's Petition to #EndTheTrade
The noted environmental activist is asking people to help put a stop to the market sales of wild animals for consumption. Several wildlife-conservation organizations are in favor of this move because it protects both animals and people. “The commercial trade of wild terrestrial animals gives pathogens that have evolved with animals the perfect opportunity to jump to new hosts — humans — and spread through a globalized population,” the petition website reads. Sponsors also say that ending this practice is critical to preventing future pandemics like that of COVID-19.
A post shared by Leonardo DiCaprio (@leonardodicaprio) on Apr 20, 2020 at 9:39am PDT
$10: Donate to the Organization Behind Earth Day
The organization Earth Day Network, which proudly declares it grew out of the first Earth Day event in 1970, is accepting donations of as little as $10 to support its mission of organizing tens of thousands of groups into one voice protecting the environment. While you’re at the website, you can learn about the history of the special day, download a photo to use on social media (like the one below) and tune into Earth Day Live, featuring Zac Efron and Van Jones, musical performances and specific calls to action every hour on April 22.
A post shared by Earth Day Network (@earthdaynetwork) on Apr 21, 2020, at 10:01am PDT.
Original artwork by Iliana (@growmija).
20 Minutes: Listen to Jameela Jamil tell the Story of Greta Thunberg
Get inspired by 17-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg in an entertaining episode of Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: The Podcast. Based on the New York Times best-selling children’s book series, Thunberg’s episode recounts why and how the teenager became an impassioned defender of the planet. It began with Thunberg convincing the people she was closest to. “Her most important victory came when, in 2016, she persuaded her mother to stop flying,” Jamil tells listeners. “This was a big deal because Malena’s career depended on traveling widely. Malena’s decision showed that no one person’s goals were more pressing than the planet.” People who are more informed about climate change, including the origins of Thunberg’s devotion to the cause, can make every day more like Earth Day.
Photo by Li-An Lim. Photo was taken during the September 20-27, 2019 Global Climate Strike.
1 Hour: Watch the SBIFF Film "Better Together"
Better Together, a film by Isaac Hernández, explores how the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill "united a community and changed the world forever." Click here to watch the film, and click here to see a Q&A of the film hosted by CEC yesterday, April 21, 2020.
