By: Wendy Skinner, Ithaca Times
“I was at the first Earth Day celebration, in Philadelphia … I was 11 … I had my clogs painted with the Earth Day symbol of the sun and the water and soil … I remember a lot of people, music … that whole free love, hippy, peace sign, groovy feeling. To me it felt more like a celebration and an honoring of the earth than of being worried about the earth or its survival.” Thirty-seven years later, Ithaca’s Sigrid Kulkowitz says she longs for the naïvely blissful feelings she felt in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, where 20,000 people gathered to show support for the environment. “I know that 11-year-olds these days, like my son, are not that fortunate.”
These days, Kulkowitz is worried. She and a group of acquaintances recently started the Climate Change Action Group, a local embodiment of the Step it Up campaign to get Washington’s leaders to address global warming with the urgency they feel is required.
Ithaca’s annual Earth Day celebration - and it is still very much a celebration - will assemble at the Farmer’s Market pavilion this coming Sunday. The music, the dancing, the hot veggie chili, an eco-fashion show, games for kids, and a parade with banners and animal masks all feel appropriately celebratory, but Earth Day also offers a time to focus on the relevance of “stepping it up.”
A little team of organizers, gathered by Earth Day organizer Joey Gates, wanted an icon for this year’s event and settled finally on human footprints to symbolize the concept of reducing one’s “environmental footprint” or impact on the earth. The ten toes represent Ithaca’s 10 years of celebrating Earth Day, first in Dewitt Park downtown and for the past three years under the cover of the wooden pavilion at Steamboat Landing.
“I think it’s a good symbol,” says Gates. “It could mean a lot of things: reducing our impact, of course, but also moving forward step-by-step, standing up for the Earth, and even recognizing our fundamental connection to the Earth.”
Gates is a celebratory kind of person. She refuses to let human folly get her down and she has a very forgiving philosophy about the state of the planet. “We got to where we are through actions that most people believed would improve life. The negative consequences are an unintentional by-product.” Blame, anger, despair - these are not emotions Gates chooses to indulge, but instead she helps others discover the satisfying balance of being aware of their actions and “living with intention.”
“We know now how devastating unplanned-for consequences can be. It’s time to discover new ways to live and to intentionally choose to live in ways that aren’t damaging to the Earth,” says Gates. Earth Day’s 10th celebration in Ithaca offers many ideas and examples of intentional living. Visitors can browse displays and talk with representatives of over 40 organizations representing renewable energy, green building, gardening, forestry, low-impact transportation, protection for our water and land, even natural burial. The science, how-to, and even the humorous side of composting will be demonstrated in 12 surprisingly fascinating booths collectively known as the Compost Fair. A new addition to the rows of exhibits at the market pavilion will be a sheltered conversation space, with a circle of hay bales and a small firepot. Visitors are invited to talk and listen to others about their concerns for the earth’s future, to share ideas about positive actions that can be taken, or whatever celebrating a not-so-healthy planet brings to mind.
Earth Day 1970
A year before the first Earth Day, the Cuyahoga River, which runs through Cleveland, burst into flames from spontaneous combustion of the oil and chemicals that saturated its waters. Randy Newman wrote “Burn On, Big River,” and it seemed the country had reached a tipping point for tolerance of environmental neglect. (Actually, the Cuyahoga had a history of fires, starting in 1936 and continuing through the next three decades, but who’s counting?)
“In the waning months of the 1960s, environmental problems were proliferating like a many-headed hydra, a monster no one could understand let alone tame or slay,” wrote Jack Lewis, a former editor of the Environmental Protection Agency’s EPA Journal. The fierce drama of Lewis’s words reflect the alarms that were going off all over the country. Air pollution in urban centers had begun to cause illnesses and deaths, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring had exposed the dangers of unregulated use of pesticides, Lake Erie was pronounced DOA, and - although it was not publicly yet - the families living above the shallow grave of a toxic waste dump in Love Canal were starting to get sick.
Wisconsin’s Senator Gaylord Nelson had the idea for Earth Day. Nelson, a Democrat, recruited Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey to co-chair the effort, and he asked Denis Hayes, a former student organizer of anti-war protests at Stanford, to coordinate it. Hayes mobilized a publicity campaign that inspired over 20 million Americans to participate in the landmark protest. Teach-ins were organized on campuses and in communities around the country. Demonstrators in Chicago wore gas masks, Bostonians held a mock funeral for Planet Earth, and in Georgia a Congressman skipped the speeches and organized a voter registration drive in poor neighborhoods. A full-page ad in the New York Times invited citizens to gather in Union Square to demand a cleaner environment, and Mayor John Lindsay arranged for 45 blocks of Fifth Avenue to be closed to traffic for two hours.
Hayes attended Earth Day in Washington, D.C., where he declared in the optimistic language of grassroots activism, “We are building a movement, a movement with a broad base, a movement that transcends traditional political boundaries. It is a movement that values . . . people more than profit”
Such rhetoric was not without its influence, and the first Earth Day was unequivocally the start of a new era for environmentalism and a swaying of public opinion. Lewis wrote: “The ideals of Earth Day, however naïve and simplistic they were in many ways, have left an enduring legacy.” The founding of the EPA in 1970 was a direct result.
Earth Day Comes of Age
Earth Day foundered in the early 1990s, when Hayes speculated that environmental principles weren’t being embraced by a diverse-enough population. Others opined that Earth Day had not asked enough of its followers, and/or that the observance had adopted a counter-culture image that belied its underlying universality and hampered its effectiveness. The event has matured since then and taken on a new relevance and a new practicality.
Gates says Earth Day is a blend of the spiritual and the pragmatic. While inviting to the table those who are in fast pursuit of systems-level changes and sustainable technologies, she wants to preserve the opportunity for getting in touch with feelings of awe and reverence, to play for a day, to congratulate ourselves for what we have done, and to invite others to this “party for the planet.”
Adam Michaelides, a Cornell Cooperative Extension program manager for the Master Composters, acknowledges the enrichment of Earth Day by the sustainability movement. “It’s certainly appropriate to have the practical side represented, and I think this is important to attracting a broader audience, but to me, Earth Day truly is a celebration of the Earth and its natural systems - which includes us.” Michaelides cites the event’s “parade of animals,” which invokes native traditions that honor the land, as an almost primal reference to our reconnection with nature.
“I am not sure if I remember the very first Earth Day, but I think I do,” says Eric Clay, an Ithacan whose approach to life and the planet is replete with both spirituality and practicality. “I came from a self-sufficient farm where my father, until he died, lived most of his life as if every day were Earth Day. Because of that, I remember having this feeling that Earth Day really could not have been a creation of the elites who lived on either the East or West coasts. It made too much sense.”
At 37, a person is perhaps past youthful optimism and well-launched in reality-based, mainstream activities. So it is with Earth Day, to be honored for its 37 years with a giant cake this coming Sunday.
Come and get a free piece, says host Joey Gates, and join in Earth Day’s deep-rooted joy and contemporary relevance.
Ithaca’s Earth Day celebration runs from noon to 5 pm, Sunday, April 22, at the Ithaca Farmers Market pavilion, which is roofed and has a wooden floor. The event is free and open to all. Earth Day is an anchor for many related talks, walks, fairs, and exhibitions in the area. For a listing of local and regional Earth-Day related events, visit the Sustainable Tompkins website, www.sustainabletompkins.com.