Coming
only two days after the April 20 anniversary of the oil spill in the
Gulf of Mexico, Earth Day takes on an ever-increasing significance as
a day to stand up to reigning power structures in the name of the
environment.
Earth
Day was founded in 1970 by Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic senator from
Wisconsin. Spurred by the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s
“Silent Spring” (a book widely credited with encouraging the
birth of the environmental movement), a 1969 California oil spill,
and the strength of the anti-war and civil rights movements, Nelson
organized the first Earth Day as a day of protest and a “national
teach-in on the environment.” (earthday.org)
Sadly,
despite some victories, the state of the environment has only
deteriorated since then. Global warming continues unabated and, in
the wake of the Gulf oil spill less than a year ago, it is clear we
need coordinated national and international action to send the
message that the wholesale destruction of the environment must stop.
President
Obama and the Democratic Party have failed to live up to their
rhetoric, promising greater environmental protection and delivering
the opposite time and time again. After losing a critical opportunity
to change world climate-change policy at the Copenhagen summit
(guardian.co.uk, Dec. 18, 2009),
Obama’s administration announced that, contrary to what he had
promised during his campaign, he would open 500,000 square miles of
U.S. coastal waters to exploitation by oil and gas companies,
including the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. (guardian.co.uk,
March 31, 2010)
This
announcement came in late March, 2010, less than a month before the
explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf
spill was, by far, the worst oil spill in the history of the planet
(The New York Times,
Aug. 3, 2010) and the Obama Administration has refused to take an
significant legal action against BP. In fact, the Thomas Jefferson
Center for the Protection of Free Expression gave a “Muzzle Award”
jointly to BP and the Obama administration for restricting media
access to the Gulf. (firstamendmentcenter.org,
April 13)
Perhaps
most disturbingly, the firm Transocean, which was responsible for
management of the Deepwater Horizon at the time of the spill has
awarded bonuses to its top executives for their “exemplary record”
and for giving the company its’ “best year” for safety. (BBC,
April 3
The
effects of the spill are only now beginning to be fully measured.
This winter, for example, U.S. scientists faced an epidemic of dead
baby dolphins washing ashore. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration cautioned that “it’s too early to tell” if the
dolphin deaths are linked to the BP spill. (National Geographic,
March 2)
This is not surprising when it is considered that the NOAA is a
division of the United States Department of Commerce, and therefore
financially linked to BP.
The
news about the dolphins was made even more frightening by a recent
study demonstrating that for every dolphin that washes up on shore in
the Gulf, 62 more have died.
(Rolling Stone)
Despite
the obvious dangers of offshore drilling, and the horrible
consequences suffered by the ecology of the Gulf following the
Deepwater Horizon
spill,
House Republicans are pushing to loosen regulation on offshore
drilling and open more areas to drilling. (Reuters, April 14)
Congress,
in a further display of putting corporate needs ahead of
environmental safety, pushed through a federal budget last week that
cuts $1.6 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency and
removes wolves from the endangered species list. (treehugger.com,
April 12)
Energy
concerns continue to cause devastating environmental repercussions
throughout the nation and around the world. Utah is putting plans
into action to begin mining tar sands for petroleum, a model
pioneered in Alberta, Canada. Tar sands, one more fossil fuel for
sale by corporate power, will encourage the production, sale and use
of petroleum-powered automobiles, which is a problem all by itself.
Worse, the tar sand mine in Alberta has been called “the most
destructive project on earth” by Environmental Defence, a Canadian
activist organization. (treehugger.com, Sept. 15, 2010)
Because
the Alberta tar sands extraction takes place on land that primarily
belongs to Indigenous peoples, the Indigenous Environmental Network
has termed the ongoing Canadian project a “slow environmental
genocide.” (ienearth.org)
The
nuclear industry, too, has once again exposed itself as an enemy of
the planet. Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex, brought to a
near-meltdown by the recent earthquake and tsunami, will take six to
nine months to be completely cooled, according to Tokyo Electric
Power Co., the company that owns the plant. (enn.com, April 18)
Given
the state of the global environment, activists everywhere must take
Earth Day as an opportunity to come together and demand that
corporations be held accountable for the damage they do to the planet
we all share. Earth Day is about more than planting trees and
gardens—it is about organizing to stop capitalism from consuming
the entire world.
