The First Earth Day and Humanity
In November 1969, five months before the first Earth Day (April 22, 1970), The New York Times reported that the “Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation’s campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam…a national day of observance of environmental problems…is being planned for next spring…when a nationwide environmental ‘teach-in’… is planned….”
In the 39 years since, the destruction of our environment has worsened around the world.
We live on a planet soaring through space. We call this spacecraft Earth. It has existed for 4.56 billion years in a 13.7 billion year-old universe. If the history of the universe were compressed into one year, all of recorded history (human civilization) took place in the last 21 seconds! We are very recent and very destructive arrivals.
Earth is a spacecraft within a second spacecraft (solar system) within a third spacecraft (Milky Way galaxy) at least. For all we know, our universe may be another spacecraft in a multiverse (or meta-universe), the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes sometimes called parallel universes.
Let’s consider Earth. We are a product of this tiny orb that is our world. Over billions of years, we have evolved in concert with other species of plants and animals. The family of humans known as hominids arrived about 5.6 million years ago. We modern humans, Homo sapiens, have been here for 150,000 years, mostly as Stone Age Hunters and Gatherers. Our Agrarian Age began about 12,000 years ago, our Industrial Age in the late 1700s, and our Post-Industrial High-tech Information Age about 60 years ago.
We are subject to the natural laws that enable everything to exist. Every physical thing we require and enjoy is derived from our world. Everything. Every breath we breathe, every drop we drink, and every bite of food is derived from our environment. Every bit of clothing, medicine, building material, and everything else is drawn from this source. This world gave birth to us and countless other species of plants and animals. Now much of life, including our own, is threatened. We are polluting and decimating life-support systems, plundering resources, and driving species to extinction.
The rate and range of global environmental deterioration is unprecedented. It is driven by the relentless needs of a global population that have grown out of control. Parasite-like and swarming, we are destroying our environment. With astonishing speed, we are attacking our ecosystems like businesses in liquidation. We have upset an extraordinary array of life that took billions of years and endless experiments to produce.
Environmental problems cross the boundaries of nation states, academic disciplines, political and cultural ideologies, and religious theologies. They affect the affluent and the impoverished, developed and developing nations, individuals and whole societies. These problems are far more than just another on a list of major concerns. Our relationship with our environment is at the core of our existence.
Environmental degradation, as grave a crisis that it represents, is not our greatest challenge. Environmental problems are symptomatic of a species that in its present form is dysfunctional. We have created a destructive and unsustainable momentum that must be arrested and reversed if we are going to sustain humanity and advance our civilization. Normal human behavior is at odds with that which supports life in all its manifestations. As Earth Day 2009 approaches, let us acknowledge that it is time for humanity to grow up. It is time for structural change.
Filed under: environmental crisis
