#ecophobia

The first Earth Day was held in 1970.

“At the time, rivers were on fire and birds were dying off en masse due to air and water pollution. Other big issues were at play, too: Vietnam was tearing people apart, and events like the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy and the Stonewall Riot had inflamed cultural divides and kept the public on edge. Despite that, 10 percent of the U.S. population took to the streets and protested the destruction of the environment on that first Earth Day.

[...] Change wasn’t immediate [...] But in the following months, [Denis Hayes] and other activists founded the Earth Day Network, targeted specific politicians and policies, and spearheaded a wide-ranging letter-writing campaign. Within the next few years, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act, and established the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a host of other protective measures.”

Highly, highly recommend this new video from Kurzegesagt.

Their videos are very well researched and they have done a great job here of laying out the progress we have made so far (it’s more than a lot of people think!) and where we need to go now.

There is lots to be hopeful for and, crucially, believing in a better future is necessary to creating that future.

“Recognition of the climate emergency is much more widespread than previously thought. We’ve also found that most people clearly want a strong and wide-raging policy response.”

I remember looking up at the canopy, eyeing how the black branches stretched over the gloomy, cloudy sky.

I sat for hours listening the the clapping of wooden palms, and the bellied laughs of maple trees as they rocked in the wind. I listened to the snickers of the murder in the leaves, all the cackles that the crows made high up in the trees.

They'd come looking eventually, and I'll have to go home again. Let me stay a little longer. My ears burn from the autumn wind.

Then the trees went silent, then the blackbirds stopped their jokes, and the wind howled louder when I heard my stepmother croak: "It's time for supper!"

I shot up like a well trained dog, and ran up the knoll to our home. I must've forgotten for a moment.

She waited not two minutes, but in cold autumn the wind carries down. Through the valley echoed a small and bitter, "Useless brat," and the door slammed behind her.

I slowed down, and remembered that I suffered a bit of a terrible fear.

Ecophobia.

I’ve also finished Rediscover Jesus so the next Christian book I’ll be reading is Gods at War.