Earth Day 2022, from grief to active

April 22 is Earth Day, a day that’s been set aside to celebrate and protect our beautiful planet. Earth Day originated in the United States at a time when Ohio’s highly polluted Cuyahoga River periodically caught fire, footage of oil-coated animals washing up on the shores of Santa Barbara made the news, and the symbol of American patriotism the Bald Eagle, was vanishing, one of many victims of the commonly used insecticide DDT.

People were waking up to the fact that something was very wrong. On the first Earth Day in 1970, 20 million people took to the streets to demand change, and from this awakening the modern environmental movement was born. Fast forward 52 years and where are we?

I trained with Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corp and one of the main take home messages from my time in the program was to lead any discussion on the state of our environment with a personal story, so I’d like to do that here. I’d like to try to communicate with readers not just with facts (of which there are many!) but with feelings.

I am an environmental scientist and a mother, and I am terrified. We are in the middle of an accelerating climate and ecological crisis like we have never seen before (despite the 1970 awakening), and anyone who is not deeply, deeply concerned does not understand the science.

When my children talk to me about what they’d like to do in the future (“I want to have a house next door to yours mom, with a big garden, and these are the things I will plant and the animals who will come to my garden…”) my heart hurts because I don’t know what their future will look like, and what will be possible for them. All I know is that their planet will almost certainly be less hospitable and less safe than the one I grew up with, and that makes me very sad and very angry. I feel grief for what’s already been lost, and grief for what will be lost. Sometimes, I end up in a very dark place, and then I have to ramp up my efforts to rise out of that dark place and back to a place of hope and joy.

But oh my goodness, there is so much hope and joy to be found when you know where to look.

I find it when I walk outside and I see my first bees of the season gathering pollen from the crocuses in my garden.

I find it when my kids spot a beaver in a random wetland on the side of the road, and we watch it for 45 minutes as it munches its way through an obscene number of sticks while the sun lowers in the sky.

I find it in every road-stranded worm the kids and I move to safety on our rainy day walks to school (mostly they do the pointing and I do the moving, which is a system that needs improvement).

I feel particularly hopeful and energized when I meet with one of the local environmental groups I’m part of, and I get to work on positive actions and solutions with other passionate, wonderful people.

Hope is not passive, it’s active. It’s not waiting for something to change for the better, it’s making it change for the better. Action truly is the antidote to despair, and no action is too small to be important. However insignificant they may seem in the grandscheme of things, our actions are part of something much bigger. They are the butterfly flapping its wings. They are the seeds of change.

So on this earth day I want to give a shout out to anyone else who feels like I do. You are not alone. Your grief is a natural response to a very real situation, and you should treat it as you would treat grief in any other instance. Reach out, talk to others, and show our spectacular planet some love.

Some actions you can take right now:

1) Celebrate, learn and network. Come out to the Earth Day Event at the Clearview Eco Park on April 22 from noon to 6 p.m. There will be activities for children, local organizations to learn from and get involved with, an Amazing Race style scavenger

hunt courtesy of Free Spirit Tours, a drum circle and much more.

2) Get political! On Monday, April 25 Clearview Council will be voting on a very important motion put forth by Councillor Doug McKechnie asking the Council to take critical action on climate change by: declaring a climate emergency; assembling a Climate Action Committee with strong citizen participation; and incorporating climate mitigation and adaptation considerations into decisions made during the upcoming Strategic Plan review for the region (which will steer the township over the next five years).

You can have a direct impact in helping to ensure this motion is passed by voicing your support in the following ways:

• Emailing all of Clearview council (council@ clearview.ca);

• Contacting Mayor Doug Measures at 705-428- 6230 ext. 280, dmeasures@clearview.ca);

• Contacting Deputy Mayor Barry Burton at 705- 428-6230 ext 276);

• and/or contacting your ward councillor.

3) Garden for the planet. Spring is here and we all want to be outside, getting our lawns and gardens ready for the warmer season. While we busy ourselves under the sun, we can help create and maintain healthy ecosystems on our own properties by:

Waiting a bit longer to “clean up” the garden. There are lots of beneficial critters still overwintering under leaves and debris, and waiting until the weather is a bit warmer before clearing it up will help ensure their survival;

Planning to add some native plants to your backyard or garden, to provide food and habitat for native birds and pollinators;

Plant 20 per cent of your vegetable garden with flowers to encourage the presence of beneficial insects, who in turn will tackle pests and help your veggies grow better without the use of chemicals;

Preserve the mature trees on your property, and plant more trees to help the earth and improve the value of your home. Aside from the ecological and intrinsic values of trees, did you know that the value of a property with healthy, mature trees is assessed onaverage five per cent higher than a similar property without? Meanwhile, strategically planted trees can reduce your summer energy bills by as much as 20 per cent – a win for the planet and the wallet!