It's Time to Act: From Earth Day 2011 to the "Earth Summit" 2012
Posted April 22, 2011 in Solving Global Warming
Today is Earth Day; and our friends at Earth Day Network are calling for “A Billion Acts of Green.” They are encouraging each of us to take a step to save our planetary home. You can pledge to plant a tree, switch to better light bulbs, eat less meat, etc. Earth Day Network has already recorded more than a 100 million acts; and their goal to reach one billion before June 2012. That is when world leaders will come to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development.
It will be the 20th anniversary of the first “Earth Summit” also convened there. In 1992, more than hundred Presidents and Prime Ministers committed their governments to take on the global challenges of climate change and loss of biodiversity. They also promised to return from Rio to their home countries to implement Agenda 21 - a detailed blueprint for sustainable development.
A generation later, there are many signs of progress around the world. While billions of people remain mired in deep poverty, the welfare of hundreds of millions of people has improved with rapid economic growth in China, India, and elsewhere in the developing world. We have created new technologies that are much cleaner and more efficient. We have devised promising new policies and approaches. We now have an unprecedented capacity to communicate and cooperate.
At the same time, there is also increasing concern and growing evidence that our current path cannot be sustained. At January 2011 World Economic Forum in Davos, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon issued a blunt warning about our prospects. He declared that our approach to economic development was not only obsolete, but infact “extremely dangerous.” He worried that - ”we are running out of time” - “Time to tackle climate change. Time to ensure sustainable, climate-resilient green growth. Time to generate a clean energy revolution.”
My hope is that “A Billion Acts of Green” will serve as a model and inspiration to world leaders as we prepare for Rio+20. They need to do more than just add to the piles of promises and plans about where we are going to be in 10, 20, or 30 years. They too need to act; and they need to be held accountable. In the run up to Rio, Presidents and Prime Ministers - in fact officials at all levels of government, in business, and civil society - should declare their own specific commitments as to what they are going to do to lead us towards a more sustainable future. The time to act is now.
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Comments
Jerry B. — Apr 22 2011 09:57 PM
Today is NOT EARTH DAY! Today is GOOD FRIDAY!
John Cockerill — Apr 24 2011 11:27 PM
The need is for folks to strike out on their own, to apply the skills they can to try to reduce the impact of industry on the environment. Industry cares only about its own bottom line. Nothing else matters. All else is lip service.
I came to the realization many years ago that life is mostly a process of moving stuff from one place to another. The rest is mostly illusion. Corporations maximize the profits they can yield from both. The power in the world belongs to those that can take the most for themselves, and pay some of it back to those who can continue to let them do so.
So what can I do? Well I save a lot of energy. A Lot. By employing my craft, the buildings I service burn less in heating expense. I did something else that really amazes me. I had a very good position in NY city for a couple of years and I had the occasion to walk to and from the train station every day. I noticed that there was a lot of litter on my path. When I got home one day I decided to go to the hardware store and by a "litter Picker" device that would allow me to grab stuff easily to put in a pail. I stuffed a few plastic bags in my back pocket, and off I went to clean up the path that I used to go to the train station. Well it took weeks to get it all. Pretty soon it was a nice path, and I felt good about my work. My kids and family thought I was losing it. Then I got this compulsion to do areas that went beyond my path. I said the streets near my home are my driveway. I should clean up the driveway. Folks made me out as the village idiot. After a while I would notice less stuff to pick up. What happened?? Well folks were embarrassed that I had to come by their home and pick up their mess. They started to clean up their own places. The kids and the low life gardeners and contractors still threw their lunch out the window, and the girls would dispose of the evening’s evidence on the roadside. The boys would throw out the bottles and cans from the booze. The alcoholics however started to carry their bottles home. As they would throw them down, they were gone the next day. Spooky huh? Then a quantum shift. The village got embarrassed and introduced their $50,000 dollar a year pick up guy to a five gallon pail. I don't need to go near the village any more as the village fathers were shamed into doing something.
Folks would stop me to see if I was casing their homes for a robbery. I would have a ton of stories to tell. “Mrs. Hathaway, you know the rich lady up the hill. She is very old and likes to take a ride in her car on occasion to get away from her stock trading. Her driver pays me to clean up the neighborhood, so she is not distracted from her thoughts while driving around town. I tell many that older folks who are retired, and their doctors tell them to go out a walk a couple of miles each day to keep them well enough to make to their next appointment. The longer you live the more you can go to the doctors. I suggest that while they are at it they could carry a pail and picker, and just drop the junk in the litter basket. The village garbage department went nuts. The litter baskets were overflowing before long. I now meet folks walking with garbage pails and bending over to pick up trash. You know when you see one bottle by the road, you get to believe that if you pick up that one bottle the place will be spotless. The streets you live on are simply an extension of your living room.
I invite you to Pleasantville, NY for a drive or a walk. You will appreciate what one unconnected community can do, when they come to the common conclusion that it can be done. The garbage trucks let less stuff fall off the trucks. The cops have clear and clean evidence at a crime scene. The girls finally stopped throwing the refuse after the evenings thrill out the window. The phenomenon is staggering. If we can do it in Pleasantville, we can do it anywhere.
All you need to do is go to the hardware store, pick up your tools, buy a Tilley hat, and focus on where you go when you go out first. If you clean up the place, I promise you folks will have less of an urge to drop stuff. When you find public property which is being used as a gardeners dump, call the village. They will clean it up. They never get calls like that. They never thought anyone cared. Then make yourself a powerful organized unit, by joining up with “Clean up the world” out of Australia. They are great and will give you a web page. Print up flyers and ask folks to help you by not throwing stuff down that you will have to pick up for them. They will do it. It is quite unbelievable. I have another job now and cannot travel the same routine. I still walk the path and clean it up more easily than before. I concentrate on hard to get to places that folks find difficult to clean up, like exits and entrances to the highways. I scout and find hot spots and focus on them until folks stop throwing. There will be less. Folk’s throw trash where there is trash. When it is clean they tend to throw less. We have an alcoholic in town who throws his beer bottles on the grass of the highway exit. Now when he comes by the next day, his bottles are the only ones on the grass. Same brand same size bottle. The challenge is to take bets on how long it will take him or her to get it. We did it with the teenage girls. We can do it for this guy. It's quite Pavlovian when you think about it. Let's hear from you, and how successful your approach is, in your neighborhood.