For Earth Day... for Earth!

“We can think of the Earth and its natural resources as a one-time inheritance that we received from nature or God… and the question is are we going to squander that inheritance like a derelict rich kid and go broke, or are we going to treat it like the fortune that it is and be good stewards?... Global society has been acting like the derelict rich kid, and experts agree that we’ve been in global overshoot for 3 decades… by mid20-30s we’ll need two Earths to support us and, of course, we only have one.”
—Emmett Duffy; Professor of Marine Science at the
College of William and Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science

Every year, I think about how I'll tackle the immense topic of Earth Day. It looms huge for me because, although Earth Day is and ought to be every day, most of us think consciously about it once a year (if that!). But the once-a-year version is significant to me because 41 years ago, when it all started, I was a college student in the midst of our campus activities—which focused mostly on education, recycling, and other cosmetic efforts. Hey, we tried!

Now, though, there's a lot more meaning to Earth Day for me, even though it seems largely neglected in our world of heedless consumption. Sometimes it's hard to be hopeful in these times of global climate change and other effects of rampant human overpopulation. One thoughtful, authoritative, and articulate blogger helps bring me back to Earth every time I visit (even though he's blogging elsewhere these days), and he is Emmett Duffy, the Natural Patriot. Here are a few of my favorite samples from 2009:

• Approaching the Ultimate Limits
  
• An assessment of the Obama administration from the Ecological Society of America
  
• The End of the World As We Know It
  

Quotes in his “Food for Thought” sidebar are only one reason to visit the Natural Patriot. I love this revolving quote widget of his, or whatever it is, and today I discovered you can refresh them by clicking through with your mouse. So in lieu of further pontificating on my part, I bring you a limited selection of more memorable comments on our predicament. Quote addict that I am, this list could go on forever, but I'm trying to be discreet!

Most have gone long unheeded, but... we can't say we haven't been warned! Even a variety of American presidents have tried to sound the alarm.

You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
—Abraham Lincoln

Saving our civilization is not a spectator sport.
—Lester Brown.

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.
—John F. Kennedy

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is a party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.
—Wendell Berry

The Creation, whether you believe it was placed on this planet by a single act of God or accept the scientific evidence that it evolved autonomously during billions of years, is the greatest heritage, other than the reasoning mind itself, ever provided to humanity.
—Edward O. Wilson

Do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what and whom do we love? Surely not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter downriver. Certainly not the waters, which we assume have no function except to turn turbines, float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not the plants, of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species.
—Aldo Leopold

One for the Tea Party:

I don’t mind paying taxes. They buy me civilization.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes

Lastly, in the true spirit of Earth Day:

Do not let spacious plans for a new world divert your energies from saving what is left of the old.
—Winston Churchill

Honoring Stewart Udall

One of the heroes of conservation during my formative years was Stewart Udall, who died last weekend. High Country News honored him in this tribute written by Gary Nabhan.

The 1960s were heady times, of course, and to be honest I was a little young to appreciate their full effect. But I heard of Udall even then, and (as Secretary of Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson) his name was synonymous with strong environmental protection in a much different, even inconceivable, era. For example, one of the things he stopped was the idea of a jetport in the Florida Everglades. He also helped make the Great Swamp (New Jersey) a National Wildlife Refuge and wilderness area instead of another regional jetport. In fact he helped add almost 4 million acres to U.S. public lands, including Canyonlands and three other national parks. He brought Wallace Stegner to Washington as Interior's writer-in-residence, and supported Rachel Carson when she alerted us to the dangers of pesticides.

Another inconceivable idea, the Trans Alaska Pipeline System, came later, but by then Rogers Morton was Secretary of Interior (after a brief tenure by Alaska's Wally Hickel), an "oil crisis" was in full swing, and U.S. policy had not-so-subtly shifted. Then came the infamous James Watt (under Reagan)... Anyway, so Udall's record at Interior remains outstanding, and not just in comparison with his successors. [Photo credit: Luca Galuzzi]

Interviewed earlier (2004) by the same publication, Udall commented on the fate of conservation in these subsequent political climates:

From 1961 until the Reagan administration, all of the presidents gave strong support for conservation. It was like a relay race in the Olympics. You would pass the baton, and Nixon took it and ran, and Ford and Carter, but when James Watt took over [the Interior Department] for Reagan, he didn’t want the baton, it just dropped to the floor, and" — with the exception of the Clinton administration — "that’s where it’s been since then."

Udall also saw his errors, as he wrote, with wife Lee, in an open letter to their grandchildren in 2008:

As a freshman congressman in 1955, I regrettably voted with my unanimous colleagues for the Interstate Highway Program. All of us acted on the shortsighted assumption that cheap oil was super-abundant and would always be available. This illusion began to unravel in the 1970s, and it haunts Americans today.... I am convinced that the American people will tighten their belts if a president forges a national strategy to stretch the life of our oil reserves and to adjust to a long-range plan of energy conservation....

Foster a consciousness that puts a premium on the common good and the protection of the environment. Give your unstinting support to all lasting, fruitful technological innovations. Be steadfast enemies of waste. The lifetime crusade of your days must be to develop a new energy ethic to sustain life on earth. ... Go well, do well, my children. Cherish sunsets, wild creatures and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the Earth.