Its time to make every day Earth Day: Opinion The World Health Organization has identified air pollution as a leading cause of global fatalities. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images) Print Star-Ledger Guest Columnist By Star-Ledger Guest Columnist Follow on Twitter on April 21, 2014 at 7:00 PM I stood in my postage stamp of a back yard recently, enjoying a clear night sky over Newark. Gazing upward, I felt connected with a vast universe stretching out in every direction and felt nothing less than a spiritual awareness of being connected with all that is. Stay with me, because I have been feeling the grief at letting some new data sink in. The World Health Organization just identified the eighth-leading cause of death globally (7 million human fatalities in 2012). It’s air pollution. The act of breathing has become a health risk. I felt a one-two gut punch, when my other trusted source confirmed this. Late Night with Jimmy Fallon featured images of smog-enveloped landmarks from Samuel L. Jackson’s travels and this new mainstream awareness makes my head and heart reel. As Earth Day arrives, I find myself thinking about what these severe changes around the globe are telling us – and whether we’re listening to the signs of distress from our planet. In 2013, scientists measured atmospheric CO2 at 400 parts per million. The last time carbon dioxide levels were this high was more than 3 million years ago, after a protracted “greenhouse epoch.” We have reached this level again in an evolutionary millisecond due to human-caused pollution. And we are experiencing the resultant planetary distress: ocean acidification, widespread species extinction, tropical forest die-off, and decreased freshwater availability. An idealist at heart, my Earth Day wish is for all of us to commit to achieving an environmentally sustainable, socially just, spiritually fulfilling way of living and being on our planet. I realize this sounds like a tall order. Some might call it naive. But if we put down our cynicism for a moment and consider how many of us want the same thing, we can see there is enormous potential in our collective desire for a better world. Moving from dream into action can be difficult. We are social creatures. What those in our social circles do, what our society values, and what we find available to us, strongly shapes our individual behaviors and choices. And we currently live in a society that values conspicuous consumption over doing what is best for people and the planet. There have always been visionaries, willing to step outside the status quo to live and tell different stories about how to be in the world. But there have always been visionaries, willing to step outside the status quo to live and tell different stories about how to be in the world. And there have always been those who bravely join them. Through them, we have already come far. From large-scale social movements that spurred deep social changes, such as the abolition, women’s rights, labor and civil rights movements, to simple daily habits like recycling, composting and buying earth-friendly products that weren’t automatic or even easy options once-upon-a-time, it’s clear that substantive positive change is possible, even probable, if we have the will. And we already have many of the solutions we need to operate more sustainably on a global scale. Substantive change requires not only vision, but a critical mass of conscious citizens committed to advance the ever-evolving dream humans have always held for a world that is better than the one they live in. So where do we begin? One can start by answering the call of movements addressing the major issues of our times. Organizations like Move to Amend, that would establish human beings, not corporations, as the legitimate recipients of constitutional protections, or Citizens Climate Lobby that is working to pass effective legislation curb runaway CO2 emissions, can begin to truly move us in the right direction. Decades from now, will we look back at smoggy photos and a sea of graves created by human-caused pollution as the moment we woke up, or as more distress signals ignored? I dont want to worry for taking a breath and I sure dont want to lose my sense of connectedness. Dedicating ourselves to co-creating a thriving, just, and sustainable world will not always be easy, but it is the ultimate labor of love – something we can undertake and do with joy. Kevin Jones lives in Newark. He is a volunteer with the Pachamama Alliance: pachamama.org.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 11:54:17 +0000
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