Published: April 05, 2008 06:04 pm            

TRIBUNE-STAR EDITORAL: Making friends with the Planet Earth

April invites everyone to embrace environment

TERRE HAUTE — T.S. Eliot probably spoke for many melancholy souls when he penned the words, “April is the cruelest month …” Then again, that was 1922, long before Earth Day gave even the most melancholic among us a reason in April to hope — and to act.

This year, April offers not only Earth Day on the 22nd, and Arbor Day on the 25th, but for many cities in the United States and Canada, the entire month has been designated as an official time for pro-environmental, nature-friendly educational and hands-on activities.

What began in 1970 as a novel coming-together of ecology-minded groups across the nation has grown into a global observance by at least a half-billion individuals. Earth Day Network, formed by the original founders of the April 22nd Earth Day, describes the celebration as the largest secular holiday in the world.

Thirty-eight years isn’t even a flash in the long life of Mother Earth, but to those who were around and cognizant for the first Earth Day, the span has been amazingly productive. Looming large in that time are passage by Congress of the Clean Air Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. But it is on the individual level that the changes seem so impressive.

Environmental citizenship once was looked upon as a kind of hippie domain, strongest on college campuses and among the inhabitants of pristine redwood groves in the Great Northwest. Today, inner-urban grammar school children are as informed and articulate about their environment as many adults are — or more so. Many an American family dinner has been enlivened by a lecture (or scolding) from an impassioned fourth-grader who’s recently learned about the vagaries of the food supply, the air we breathe, the water we drink and the animals and insects our lifestyles threaten.

This is a good thing.

So is the fact that it has never been easier for ordinary people to be informed and to participate in Earth Day, Earth Month or year-round pro-Earth efforts. The Internet offers an organization for every imaginable area of interest, while local groups such as TREES Inc., and the White Violet Center for Eco-Justice at St. Mary-of-the-Woods provide a wide variety of ways to beautify and protect the environment outside, and inside, our bodies.

One program this year at White Violet, which celebrates Earth Day April 19, is a light bulb exchange — energy gobbling incandescents for compact fluorescents. Terre Haute residents also have a major eco-advance to celebrate: curbside recycling has begun in our community. (Don’t let the new system’s glitches discourage; patience and perseverance will pay off.) For about 18 cents a day, anyone can be a foe of landfills and friend of the Earth.

The point is the same as it has been since 1970 — look around, get educated, accept that we are all in this together, then do something about making our shared space cleaner, healthier and guaranteed to last.

        

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