April 22, 2020: Musings on Earth Day #50

Happy Earth Day!

Not only is today earth day; it’s the 50th anniversary of earth day! Do you recall the first one? I was 15, so I’m sure I was aware of it, but I didn’t feel like it really affected me. From where I lived and moved, the earth looked fine. Even years later, when I was in my early thirties and took an 8 week trip around the USA with my two (then young) sons, I clearly recall feeling so reassured by the vast and beautiful land, and I remember thinking that with all this wilderness, surely the earth could survive and thrive.

I never read Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. I started recycling when it became mandatory. I wasn’t at all alarmed when the beaches I spent every summer enjoying would have clumps of oil and trash wash up some days. To me, there was pollution, but it was far off and couldn’t affect me.

This was my denial. I avoided things that were too fatalistic and grim about pollution and the consequences of overpopulation and climate change. But as I learned more, grew in wisdom and understanding, and widened my horizons beyond my own limited perspective, I could no longer stay in the safe but artificial harbor.

We know so much more now, and we also know that climate change affects those who are underprivileged and disenfranchised the most. And that’s true here in the good old USA, too. Like the recent tornado in our city, like this pandemic, it is the homeless, the poor, and people of color who are being most affected, who do not have the resources to change things.

We must be the ones who help move the needle for those who can not. “There is no hierarchy of oppressions,” Audre Lorde taught us. People of color, immigrants, those with mental illness, and homeless people are feeling the trickle-down effects of our lust, greed, and willful ignorance.

It’s painful and frightening to face the worst effects and the potential destruction of climate change. Part of that pain comes from our despair at how little we can help. May this time of radically slowed commerce and movement be a lesson that helps us change.

Click here for a wonderful piece by a UU minister

Love and hope to you on Earth Day. Yours, Cynthia