The power of one
Earth Day is not a sham.
It’s a beginning.
The event started with an idea.
Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin, who launched the first Earth Day in 1970, said he came up with the idea in 1962 as a way to “put the environment into the political limelight once and for all.”
Nelson persuaded president John F. Kennedy to raise awareness about environmental problems through a national conservation tour.
The Wisconsin senator said the tour wasn’t successful in putting the environment to the forefront of the national agenda.
But it was a start.
The germ of the idea evolved into Earth Day, now considered the start of the modern environmental movement, mobilizing millions of Americans, and later millions of Canadians, then billions worldwide.
How is this a bad thing?
Some argue that Earth Day is a sham, because people should be making environmentally responsibly choices 365 days a year.
Yes, that is the ideal – but to achieve that ideal, we must start somewhere, even if it is only one day a year, giving environmentalism one day in the “political limelight”, a chance to educate the planet, a chance to inspire future generations.
Over the decades since the event first started, Earth Day has encouraged individuals, businesses and governments to make smarter environmental choices – recycling, reduced use of plastics, awareness that we must reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.
Earth Day also helps garner support for environmentally-conscious political parties such as the Green Party – political power will eventually translate into action, even if the Greens only manage to form a minority of the elected representatives of a particular country.
The main theme of Earth Day is exploring ways to make every day an Earth Day.
Scrapping the event is counter-productive.
Earth Day is not a sham.
It’s a beginning.
Every political idea has a beginning – none start with absolute success, demanding all or nothing is naieve.
We’re not going to save the world with just one day of improvement, but a journey of a thousand days begins with one step.
Environmentalism does not preclude addressing other problems – in fact they all act in twisted kind of synergy ‑ such as poverty, disease, drought and war.
It’s not an either-or equation.
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