Earth Day 2024: consume with care
Antonella Manuli practices regenerative organic farming
“Man’s attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature,” pointed out Rachel Carson, author of the 1962 ground breaking book Silent Spring. “But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself? [We are] challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves.”
Earth Day began in 1970 as a teach-in to understand how we are altering and destroying nature– and we are still learning how to live more lightly on our planet.
In 1969, after Sen. Gaylord Nelson saw the devastating Santa Barbara oil spill, he called on college students to hold teach-ins on April 22 where they’d play hooky from their regular classes and instead learn about environmental problems caused by 150 years of unregulated industrial development.
The event expanded beyond colleges with more than 20 million Americans or 10% of the US population participating. Members of all political parties, rich and poor, urban and rural, came together to call for change becoming one of the largest protests in American history. President Nixon responded to the protests by proposing the Environmental Protection Agency.
“Their actions that day ignited an environmental movement and proved that nothing is beyond our capacity if we do it together,” notes President Biden in his Earth Day message. “Today, we carry on their legacy by building a greener, more sustainable planet and, with it, a healthier, more prosperous Nation.”
While we have made significant progress, today we have plenty of challenges unforeseen fifty years ago.
“Deforestation, nature loss, toxic chemicals, and plastic pollution also continue to threaten our air, lands, and waters, endangering our health, other species, and ecosystems,” Biden said in his Earth Day message.
In her April 21, 2024 letter, historian Heather Cox Richardson details the Biden administration’s progress: building “a clean energy economy, providing well-paid union jobs as workers install solar panels, service wind turbines, cap old oil wells, manufacture electric vehicles, and so on, while also curbing air pollution from power plants and lead poisoning from old pipes, the burden of which historically has fallen on marginalized communities.”
Biden’s accomplishments include bringing the U.S. back into the Paris Climate Accord, conserving more lands and waters than any president before him, and working with the international community to slash methane emissions and restore lost forests.
“Today, I encourage all Americans to reflect on the need to protect our precious planet; to heed the call to combat our climate and biodiversity crises while growing the economy; and to keep working for a healthier, safer, more equitable future for all,” urges President Biden.
How to heed that call?
- Plant something– grow a garden that feeds your family or the birds and the bees. Take that holiday Poinsettia and put it in the ground!
- Consume differently– avoid plastics and choose regenerative agriculture
“We’re no longer citizens, we’re consumers,” pointed out Patagonia founder and owner Yvon Chouinard at Ventura College on Earth Day, April 22, 2019.
So what do you consume?
Organic is a start but purchasing products made using regenerative agriculture is better for the planet, as Chouinard explains.
And more and more regeneratively farmed products are now available at the farmers market, online, and at specialty stores everywhere. You can order them directly from Patagonia or you can find olive oil and wine that is grown with the planet in mind from VeroVinoGusto, an importer also based in my hometown of Ventura, CA.
Wine Predator Gwendolyn Alley with Antonella Manuli in Tuscany
Wine Predator Gwendolyn Alley inspects the head trained vines with Antonella Manuli
art predator 