Earth Day is not just about “the Earth”

Not that I have a better alternative, but I don’t love the name “Earth” Day. What I love even less is the slogan “save the Earth.”

Earth is our home and a magical place, but it’s not an amorphous “being” that needs our saving. It is the human species that need saving.

If you’ve read the history of Earth Day, you’ll know that the first Earth Day was largely organized to elevate the public awareness of air and water pollution. In fact, looking at photos from the first Earth Day in 1970, you might be struck by how many people protesting in the streets were wearing masks – the air quality was horrible back in those days!

It is true that the modern environmental movement has been about conservation and wildlife, but it has also always been about us: our health, livelihood, quality of life; it’s about our children, their chance to flourish and admire the extraordinary forms of life on this planet. The earth is 4.5 billion years old, having survived asteroid strikes and more; even if we had an all-out nuclear war, the planet would survive, it is us that wouldn’t.

My point is: our rhetoric matters a whole lot. Tell someone to save the earth, and you might hear “I don’t have time to care about sea turtles when I’m trying to put food on the table.” But this isn’t just about sea turtles, forests, and song birds – it is about every one of us.

Let me leave you with this passage by Peter Karevia from UCLA that is resonating with me today.

“Life is tenacious and evolution is inventive and resourceful. Almost no matter what we do, life will persist on Mother Earth — she is one tough lady. Even if there is a massive extinction, slowly the number of species will recover. So it is not Mother Earth that we should worry about. It is the quality of our own lives…The real environmental crisis will be an increasingly bland and uninspiring world devoid of the joy nature can provide, and a world where humans persist but do so with diminished health and perhaps a world where only the wealthiest have access to clean air and water and greenery and clean beaches and rivers. It wouldn’t be the end of life or even humanity. But it would be a world we all want to avoid.”

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