Reflections on Earth Day, Sunday, April 22, 2001
by Austin Repath

Earth Day offers all sorts of wonderful projects, inviting the public to clean up parks, plant trees and hundreds of other creative activities. None of which captures my imagination. Earth Day brings to our attention the fact that we are burying the planet with our garbage, overpopulating, polluting. But for me this is all counterproductive.

I can’t watch another oil spill documentary showing dying ducks smeared with crude oil. I totally ignore television shows on clear cutting, statistics on population growth and articles on ozone holes. No, I ‘m not denying any of it. It is obvious that we are destroying the planet.

My problem is that I am overwhelmed with the magnitude of the catastrophe. Although I know it’s true, I’m immobilized by the fact that we are heedlessly committing an act of such staggering proportions that I can hardly comprehend it. And my response: I calculate how I can maintain my current lifestyle without changing, and I tell myself that with a little luck I’ll be dead before the really bad stuff begins to happen.

I confess I did get a little enthusiastic around Earth Day last year. I decided to compost my garbage, be more careful about what I put in my blue box. I even considered joining a group to clean up the creek in my local park. Then I got discouraged by the thought that by summer it would once again be filled with car tires and shopping carts.

The reality of my life is that I drive a car, leave my air-conditioner running, read tree-killing newspapers. I am the problem. And I don’t think I can change. One day, probably before the end of the century, our children will find themselves in a world profoundly degraded by our life-styles. “And it’s too late to do anything about it” says a voice in my head.

In this morbid state, I fantasize humanity experiencing a collective near-death experience and coming back with a whole different attitude towards life. I imagine us seeing the world as a garden to tend, to make into a work of art, befitting our mythical origins in another garden.

But I fear that in truth our species is engaged in an act of self-destruction on a planetary scale. Trapped in a lifestyle we cannot get out of, we are like addicts unable to break the habit even though we know it is killing us. Our governments talk about doing something but then lack the courage to even sign an antipollution treaty. Most businesses are too driven by profit and economic imperatives to be anything but naysayers. People in the street (in other words, you and I) preoccupied with the mundane details of their day-to-day existence can't seem to do anything.

But despite all my cynical take on things, I long find a vision for the earth that would move us beyond our limited belief in what we think is possible. Despite my critical nature, deep down I want someone to come along and inspire me, to inspire all of us. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a leader emerged from our midst to show us the way?

Someone like Churchill, who rallied his people at a moment in history when they had lost hope. Someone who would offer us a vision of the earth that would be as inspiring as that which moved the cathedral builders of the Middle Ages to construct those awesome spires of beauty and majesty out of mortar and stone. I can picture that someone arousing us from our lethargy, and inspiring us with words vibrant with Churchillian verve.

“Let us come together on this Earth Day. Declare ourselves willing and, with or without hope, ready to do what we must in this, the great work of our generation. That out of this struggle to find a way to survive will come not only a planet restored, but an earth tended and refurbished with the care and love and grace that a master gardener brings to her garden.” Maybe then we can stand alongside our fathers and grandfathers, that it may be said of us as it was of them, “This was their finest hour.”

In the meantime, I think I’ll go over and haul that shopping cart out of the creek.

The Pilgrim (pilgrim@yesic.com)