I vaguely remember the first Earth Day in 1970. (I was only 9.) Like many things pre-internet, it took a while for Earth Day to enter the midwestern consciousness. However, four years later my junior high school newspaper was publishing a special Earth Day edition. My assignment? To write a book review of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Published in 1962, Carson’s book, which highlighted the ways chemical compounds such as DDT were widely used without appropriate testing or knowledge of their effects on animal, plant or human life, is often credited with igniting the environmental movement. And it is an incredibly difficult book for an eighth grader to read and comprehend. (At least I thought so!)
I’ve never forgotten the feeling of responsibility I carried as I tried to convey the book’s importance to my peers—in two paragraphs of mimeographed typeface illustrated with a drawing my friend Kelly created of a bald eagle, one of the species most famously endangered by DDT. Whether we knew it in 1970 or not, the first Earth Day was a watershed moment in our world. To this day, I cannot see a bald eagle—a species which is no longer endangered in large part because of Silent Spring and the environmental movement—without remembering that; without feeling profound gratitude for the many, many ordinary and courageous and tireless people who engage in Earth advocacy and action every single day.
We have all seen images of Earth healing during this pandemic: clear canals in Venice; a Los Angeles skyline unobscured by smog; wild animals in the streets of cities like Seattle. These unexpected, often heart-warming, signs have given many hope. It may also give us pause to think about what is possible for us to accomplish as an Earth community—perhaps, for some, the first real evidence that human action, humanity’s choices, do in fact impact the whole of Earth’s life. As we begin to think, and argue, about how to enter into a “new normal,” living with this novel coronavirus and the myriad other challenges we face as a global community, we must all realize that this is another watershed moment—one we all share and have immediate access to.
How will we respond to this moment? Will we find a way to co-create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible (which last year’s Spirituality in the 21st Century facilitator Charles Eisenstein writes about)?
Novelist and activist Arundhati Roy, winner of the Man Booker Prize for her novel The God of Small Things, recently published an essay titled “The Pandemic is a Portal.” According to Roy, the pandemic has exposed egregious inequalities and injustices, as well as pointing to competing impulses between governments (which will seek to increase surveillance, control and privatization) and the populace, who seek greater solidarity and understanding, greater equality and justice. Roy’s environmental activism, as well as her political activism, is apparent in the article. Her words strike me as worth pondering today, on this 50th anniversary of Earth Day:
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
“We can choose to walk through it dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk though lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”
—Arundhati Roy, from “The Pandemic is a Portal”
—Jenifer Hanson, Prairiewoods director