Earth Day is a Good Time to Start Changing Our Collective Human Environmental Behaviour

April 22, 2019 – Today is the 49th anniversary of the first Earth Day, an environmental movement that started in the United States in the year Richard Nixon signed into law the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, all groundbreaking pieces of legislation. A Conservative president recognized that conservative and conservation shared the same word root, “conserve.” Today Earth Day is celebrated in 192 countries with more than 1 billion of us participating in activities each year. So it seems a good day to talk about what we humans can do to conserve the planet.

The organizers of this year’s Earth Day celebration have called for a billion acts of green, stating that each of us through some small action can make a difference. What kind of acts are we talking about? You may want to:

• Go to a nearby green space, park, trail or waterway to pick up and dispose of non-recyclable trash while ensuring that anything recyclable gets put in a recycling bin.
• Participate in tree planting or create a garden that attracts pollinators.
• Calculate your personal carbon footprint and begin to take steps to reduce it.
• Cut out one meat meal per week to lower greenhouse gas emissions associated with that industry.
• Forego a car trip by taking public transit.
• Eliminate the purchase of foods in single-use plastic containers when you do your shopping.
• Write to your government representatives to tell them to take climate change as seriously as you do and don’t take “no response” as an answer.
• Don’t stop doing all of these things and more the day after Earth Day.

In the past few postings, I have mentioned Greta Thunberg, the teenager from Sweden, who is becoming the representative of youth calling for action from governments to combat global warming. Thunberg’s action to do a weekly one-day walkout from classrooms has inspired millions to join her in shaming their governments. The argument about skipping school and homework raised by politicians opposed to these demonstrative acts doesn’t wash with these young people who see leaders as skipping their responsibility to do the homework necessary to save the planet.

Thunberg’s movement is tame compared to what may soon follow as more and more youth are heeding a call to action to demonstrate against governments and their inaction related to anthropogenic climate change. It reminds me of the growing anti-war movement of the 1960s as Americans and supporting youth from other countries began to mobilize against the war in Vietnam.

How much longer before we see, not just Greenpeace protesting a new drilling rig in Arctic waters, but people massing in cities to march in protest against governments and industry that threaten existence as we have come to know it? If you don’t believe this is inevitable you should visit the site of Extinction Rebellion, a movement that is targeting government inaction on climate in many countries. On its site, it notes that all it needs is 3.5% of the population of any regime to become actively engaged in resistance over a period of time to cause that government to concede or collapse. It states that governments not addressing the climate change and environmental crisis of the 21st century “have lost their legitimacy.” In the week before Earth Day, the movement called for “everyone who knows we are in a climate emergency to use nonviolent direct action to confront, disrupt or shut down” governments, fossil fuel companies, and those who make money by protecting the fossil fuel industry.

It is not surprising to read about such groups forming on the Internet today. With the emergence of the Alt-Right, the Anti-fascist movement, white supremacists, and jihadists, we are seeing fringe actors take centre stage and occupying more and more column inches in the media each day. This is the world we live in where extreme arguments are becoming normalized.

My hope is that Greta Thunberg and youth around the world succeed in shaming politicians and CEOs of polluters to act in the best interest of the planet, and do it now. For young people like Thunberg who despairs about her future and the planet, how many more Earth Days will it take before the vast majority of humanity organizes to defend the planet’s health and a sustainable future for all who live on it?