Meet Gaylord Nelson: Founder of Earth Day
Former Wisconsin Governor and U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed a nationwide teach-in on the natural envronment in 1969. It proved very popular and in 1970 April 22 was declared National Earth Day. It has since spread to most countries around the world. A major effort has been made in local communities to clean up the environment which has engaged community organizations, religious groups, and schools.
Doing something local is important, but the involvement of government in climate change and environmental policies is also needed if these issues are to addressed globally. Here the U.S. gvernment has been lagging behind other nations and under the Trump Administration the U.S. has moved backwards.
Through exective orders Trump has promoted fossil fuels (“drill, baby, drill”) and pushed back on wind and solar power, spreading false information about renewable energy.
His administration has rolled back dozens of environmental rules that affect power plant emissions and vehicle pollution.
His administration has rolled back animal and nature protections and cut National Park and National Forest personel. Logging has been permitted on government land.
Hs administration has suppressed climate research both by the government and by blocking grants to universities.
The U.S. has withdrawn from 66 international bodies, conventions, and treaties. We are no longer leaders in addressing clmate change,
There won’t be a reversal of these environmental standards without a new administration, and even if that happens it will take years to restore what has been lost, much less move forward.
What can we do?
Continue to call attention to the environmental crisis, often through agention-getting activities. Students at the University of Maine ride bicycles naked on Earth Day to call attentions to the need to reduce carbon in the atmosphere.
There are also naked bike rides on June 21, the summer solstice (when its warmer), to call attention to the same concern about reducing carbon emissions. It has now become a worldwide event.
Naked bike ride in Chicago,IL on June 21.
On the other side of the continent 50-70 protesters got naked and hugged trees to keep a eucalyptus grove on the University of Californis Berkeley campus from being cut down. We need more, not less, trees.
Why are these protesters naked? To show that we need to connect connect bodily with Mother Earth. One can find a patch of earth to claim as one’s meditation spot, maybe in the shelter of a tree or deep in a forest. Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk of Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky, wrote about the relationship between contemplation and action: “He who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love will not have anything to give others.” The other could also be Earth, from which we are cut off. But that’s only in our minds. In our bodies we are part of Earth, composed of the same elements found in Earth. As Merton said (and I apply it to our relationship with Earth): “We are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.” We are Earth. Our bodies are composed of the minerals that are in Earth. From Earth we came, to it we will return.
Contemplation and action go together. One cannot act if we are not full of love for what we want to preserve.
This man contemplates the state of the woods by sitting within it.
One can connect with the earth by walking barefoot a grass field or on a sandy beach.
It is only by connecting earth through actual touch meditation that we will develop a loving relationship with earth by which we will want to save it .Earth is our mother that nourishes us. Why do we want to degrade her?
Pastor Frank
