March 12th, 2009
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Next month we celebrate Earth Day, the calendar hub of environmental action in the United States and around the globe.
The event, launched back in 1970, has enjoyed enduring life, inspiring countless mid-April tree plantings and “trash offs.” No doubt many adults today remember canvassing a ditch for soda cans and paper litter sometime during their childhood.
Lately, Earth Day has been enjoying a resurgence as green aspirations break out in corporate offices, Jaycee meetings and kindergarten classrooms everywhere.
But with the movement focused on April 22, you might be asking yourself, is it too late to sign up?
Not at all, says Raquel Garcia, communications manager for the Earth Day Network. “It’s never too late. We encourage actions no matter how small. There are many things you can do. You can plan a community event, maybe with just your neighbors. Maybe you call up your representative or senator or state official and ask them to put pressure on the federal government to help curb global warming by cutting carbon emissions.”
Garcia had other suggestions when we spoke Wednesday, noting that you also could:
- Search for an event on the Earth Day Network and sign up with something already planned.
- Watch an Inconvenient Truth
- Pledge to not eat meat for a month, which would have a tremendous effect on reducing global warming, according to Garcia, pointing out as many experts do that producing meat is resource-intensive.
- Organize a day at school to teach children about renewable energy.
“The actions are really infinite; there are so many things you can do,” she said.
Last year, EDN, based in Washington D.C., sponsored events in eight key U.S. cities. This year, they’ve increased that to 10, though the tenor of the events will be a bit different. There will still be a full day-long festival on the National Mall in D.C. But instead of a day-long festivals in the other cities, the Earth Day weekend celebrations (April 17-19) will focus on volunteer projects; a “nationwide weekend of action”.
Yes, that means you’ll gather with others to work — cleaning up parks, laying garden beds, scouring beaches, planting trees or perhaps helping weatherize low-income housing. (We might be unemployed in America, but we’re not out of work!) The details have not been announced yet, but soon. Look for more at the Green Apple Festival site.
Participants at the ten sponsoring city events will be treated to a free concert that Sunday. Again, watch for details. We’ll keep you posted here as well.
So if you live in one of the ten sponsor cities: New York City, Boston, Washington DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Denver, Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle, get ready for a busy weekend.
If you dock your boat in a smaller hamlet, you can check out planned events at the Find An Event search area on the EDN website.
You also can register community or group events, large or small, with the EDN.
Garcia is certain that even with the focus on work – which seems in keeping with the times this year – Earth Day will enjoy tremendous turn out. She sees more mainstream involvement than ever, having recently fielded calls from places not always associated with environmental action, such as military bases and a New York branch of the Homeland Security Office.
People are realizing that protecting the environment is not partisan and it’s not particular, she said. The environment is, by definition, all that surrounds us. It’s clean air, healthy food, unspoiled land and a future for our children. We all have a stake.
“We’re very happy to see more and more people seeing that (for) one, we don’t have any more time to waste. If we keep waiting for a miracle to happen, it’s not going to happen. We better stop reducing (our emissions and waste) now, or we’re going to go to the point of no return a lot sooner than a lot of people realized. ”
(Sponsors for the large city events include: Disneynature Earth (the movie opens in theaters April 22); Timberland: Join the EarthkeepersTM movement; Motorola, Inc.: Offering the first carbon neutral mobile device, MOTOTM W233 Renew and Clear2GOTM: Drink Clean & Go Green.)
Photo credit: Justin Kase Condor, Noofangle Media,
Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media
