A Partnership for the Planet
“Now is the time for unstoppable courage,
To preserve and protect our health . . .
And our families and our livelihoods…
A partnership for the planet” . . . our wealth.
© Forrest W. Heaton April 2022
The words above were written by earthday.org as part of a 2022 email to increase citizen participation in Earth Day—this year 22 April, but every day in the minds of these organizers. With the exception of the words “our wealth”, we copied the above words but rearranged them into our own poem format. One’s level of participation in this partnership is up to each of us. We encourage you to read this full blog post, search Earth Day 2022 Partnership via your search engine, and then make your own decision(s) . . . daily! Our health, families, and livelihoods depend on it!
Readers of our Blog are acutely aware of the urgency of Climate Change. Readers are further very much aware of Earth Day in the U.S. What readers may be unaware of, however, is the partnership being put together jointly by earthday.org and climatescience.org and how it might become the movement for which both organizations have strived. Climate Science’s mission is to “Make the transition to a sustainable future actionable.” Their focus is on youth. Political leaders worldwide have made it abundantly clear they have no intention to move to sustainability at the pace required. Youth, on the other hand, see the dire need and act on the implications.
On Monday 4 April, the United Nations issued a nearly 3,000 page report written by climate specialists worldwide which lays out the situation for all to see. Antonio Guterres, U.N. Secretary General, minced no words: This report serves as a “file of shame, cataloging empty pledges that put us firmly on track towards an unlivable world.” The governments of high emitting countries “are choking our planet, based on their vested interests and historic investments in fossil fuels.”
Earth Day 2022 is celebrated in the U.S., Canada, and around the world on Friday 22 April. It is a day held to promote environmental awareness and calls for the protection of our planet. This date will mark this Earth Day’s 52nd Anniversary, the first Earth Day celebrated in 1970. When asking yourself, family, friends or your search engine “how you might celebrate this day,” myriad options can come to your attention, some of which revolve around “reduce, reuse, recycle.” Options can include activities aimed specifically at reducing the negative aspects of climate change.
Some of you celebrate daily with composting: mulching egg shells, coffee grounds, banana peels, clementine rinds, dinner left-overs, etc., ending with rich soils for gardens and pots. There is often no comparison for tastes and freshness comparing home-grown vs. store-bought/shipped-in produce. In addition to daily composting as well as getting involved in the partnership described above (age may present some restrictions but we’ll work around them), Mary & I have signed up for “Trail Walk & Photography Challenge”—an Earth Day 22 April meet up with fellow CCRC residents appreciating our beautiful planet.
Whereas it’s doubtful we’ll encounter the bird pictured below on our Trail Walk, we are daily reminded of the beauty of nature. Can you imagine humans trying to improve on this image? Master painters would fail. Nature succeeds. What this bird, this family of birds, these birds, this wildlife, all of wildlife does not need is negative actions, or inactions, by the “us” of this world—all 7.8 billion of “us.” What they need from “us” are positive actions to eliminate oil spills, eliminate hydraulic fracking, eliminate habitat destruction. We can do it—harness wind and solar for our energy, clean the water, stabilize the habitat. Pogo had it right: “We have met the enemy and He is Us!”
