If you ever asked a parent or grand-parent the question “How come there’s a Mother’s day and a Father’s day, but there’s no kid’s day?”, the standard answer was always, “Every day is kid's day.”
The same answer could easily apply to Earth day as well. Today is the day that all the humans on Earth suddenly recognize that they live on …Earth. Yeah, it’s weird considering the fact that everything we need to exist is right here on this planet. We’ve been to the moon, and it turns out you have to bring your own air, water and food with you. It's also really cold and one hell of a commute.
When I was growing up in the west-island burbs, I was something of an environmentalist. Well, actually I didn’t know there was a name for it; I just had a thing for nature. In those days there were more green spaces that, as it turns out, were really just undeveloped land. It wasn’t uncommon to find ponds and brooks filled with tadpoles in the springtime. There were forests where one could lose themselves, and fields of grass where one could explore. When developers showed up to plow over trees in favour of new houses, it bothered me. Of course it never occurred to me that the same thing must have happened before they built my own home.
The thing that really angered me was that even though we lived on an island, surrounded by rivers and lakes, you couldn't swim in them because they were hopelessly polluted. So many years later things have changed a bit, but not by much.
I don’t like the label environmentalist, largely because it isn’t really something you choose to be. We are by nature, inexorably connected to this planet. It provides all of the essential things we need to survive and thrive. To want to preserve those is as natural as taking a breath.
It is often in our obsession with survival that we do ourselves the biggest disservice. Recently I got into a spat with a friend living in Alberta. I’d made some comments about the oil sands projects in the province’s north, in particular coming down on the side of a group of Greenpeace activists. They had hopped a fence at one of the fields and proceeded to occupy a building. Apparently the folks in Alberta are a touch sensitive about anything that besmirches the reputation of the oil sands projects.
Among the scathing rebukes I received was the suggestion that I should be thankful for the blessing that the oil sands had given Canada and the world. Without which we would all be unemployed, living in dark caves and eating canned beans.
The economic pay off from the oil sands is considerable. The long-term environmental impact is ponderous. Although it has been rightly argued that the emissions from oil sands production is not significant compared to the rest of Canada, and other sources of petroleum production worldwide, it is the destruction of land and the massive lakes of toxic residue, referred to a tailing ponds, that are most troubling.
I’m not naïve. I know that the world faces significant energy issues in the coming years, and in many ways projects like the oil sands provide a necessary, if unpalatable, short-term solution.
So what are we doing in the meantime?
Yesterday my six year-old son looked at me and asked rather bluntly, “Do we compost?”
Good question. And no, we don’t, but it may be a good time to start. In fact most of the things we can do to reduce our impact on the environment are simple and sensible. Using energy efficient light bulbs, idling our cars less, choosing greener cleaning products, using less water or capturing rain water for lawns and gardens. A good friend recently wrote a terrific blog about some of these ideas, click here to read.
The thing is, our actions don't have to be dramatic or radical. The most profound and effective change comes from simple every day acts.
It's important to have an Earth day, if anything to remind us that life’s blessings do not come courtesy of oil companies but rather this remarkable living, breathing planet. We're not just tenants here, our very existence relies on a healthy, sustained environment. If we make life inhospitable for humans, the planet will carry on long after we are gone. To consider ourselves vital to the future life of the planet is exceedingly arrogant.
So let's celebrate what we have by changing the way we treat the world around us. One way to start might be recognizing that every day is Earth day.
Unless you'd rather the moon.
Go Earth, Go.
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