Earth Day - 50 Years of Steady Progress - Perspective over a Lifetime
TIME is the great educator. We learn over time by looking BACK to see the results of our decisions, and the consequences of our actions. Earth-consciousness began long before
I hear this from the generation evolving into power. “Boomers have destroyed the earth and left us with an uncertain future for our children.”
My generation grew up with the Atom Bomb. We practiced ducking under desks during Air Raids. Our school built a bomb shelter to protect us from atomic radiation. We stocked it with food, water and supplies to last until we felt safe to leave.
No one really knew how long that would be, but the devastation that destroyed Japan and ended what we hoped would be our last World War was still raw and evident. We didn’t know what we would find when we emerged from our concrete casket, but we hoped there would be something left to build a new life upon.
Progress is hard to see when you view one decade at a time.
Looking back over many decades provides an evolving story. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s was a huge wake-up call for agriculture. The practice of deep-ploughing large fields of native grasses in the mid-west exposed topsoil to wind. With prolonged drought, ancient topsoil was blown into black clouds of fine dust that blew all the way to East Coast cities.
From this experience rose the concept of conservation. Conserve valuable soil from wind and rain.
Protect it and hold it. I remember illustrations of how to plant crops on hills that differed from previous practices. People learn from mistakes, but it’s nature that pays the price of this very slow learning process. Fortunately for us, and for our earth, nature has the ability to heal wounds inflicted by humanity.
Look up Environmental Disasters on Wikipedia. You will find a list divided by category: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Health, Industry, Air/Land/Water, etc.
The Great Sparrow Campaign in China was thought to help save crops by killing birds. It resulted in a deluge of locusts that killed 38 million people. It wasn’t that long ago that millions of mice took over Australia. Do you remember the videos? A true nightmare in the light of day.
In 1962 Rachel Carson published her now-famous book, Silent Spring. Pesticide-use, especially DDT to eradicate mosquitoes, had become so rampant birds were dying from starvation and poisoning. I remember our neighborhood group of kids chasing the DDT truck down the road to cover our bodies with the sweet-smelling liquid being sprayed into our forest.
The Cuyahoga River in Ohio became famous when it caught on fire in 1969 from industrial pollution dumped into its waters. The Hudson River literally died. The Love Canal contaminated by 21,000 tons of toxic chemicals led to the 1980 Comprehensive Environmental Response and the Superfund to clean up environmental disasters.
These tragedies gave birth to the environmental movement.
Many of these infestations and disasters were caused through commerce, but many are also caused by Climate Change and just plain ignorance. We try to fix what we see as a problem and create another problem to replace it. Over time we learn that working in balance with nature is what works.
The Cuyahoga and Hudson Rivers are now teeming with life and an example of how a river can heal itself if just left alone. DDT was banned and we now fight Round-up and GMOs. The concept of permaculture was born to capture water and enrich soil. Butterflies and entire species are going extinct while determined people are preserving habitat.
While humans learn the hard way, nature has been doing the best it can to continue to heal from every damaging action humans inflict.
Have you seen images of Chernobyl? If you are young, you may not remember when their nuclear power plant exploded in 1988 and wiped out an entire city of 50,000 people in Russia. It’s still radioactive but a forest wildlife habitat has evolved among abandoned buildings. At this point, about 1,000 people have moved back in.
All of these stories of tragedy and healing are examples of how life goes on in spite of humans destroying our home over and over and over again.
It doesn’t mean that we can count of earth to always heal herself, however. We learn that there is HOPE for the future BECAUSE Mother Earth has the capacity to adapt and heal.
I recently read a novel by Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered, that takes place in two time zones. One is when Darwin brought forth his theory if evolution and was treated with disdain, to put it mildly, by people who didn’t want to believe that anything other than The Creation could be true. Yet, time and science have proven that life adapts.
