Earth Day 2009 – who said what?
Here in the UK, any impact Earth Day (22.04.09) might have had was overshadowed by the multimedia circus that was Budget 2009.
Around the world, however, a number of organisations and politicians used the occasion to make a point; whether they have created a basis for accountability remains to be seen, but at least we have the sound bites required to hoist them by their own petard in the event that they deviate too far away from long term sustainability and too close to fiscal short-termism.
President Barak Obama toured a wind energy equipment factory on Earth Day.
“The choice we face,” he said, “is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline. We can remain the world’s leading importer of oil, or we can become the world’s leading exporter of clean energy. We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc across the landscape, or we can create jobs working to prevent its worst effects. We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors, or we can confront what countries in Europe and Asia have already recognized as both a challenge and an opportunity: The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy.”
Fighting talk and I would recommend watching this space. He faces the toughest challenge of any incoming President and has the greatest opportunity to walk the talk.
Disneynature, a new film label from the Walt Disney Company, is promoting its new film, Earth, by planting a tree for everyone who sees the movie between the 22nd and the 28th April. 500,000 trees are scheduled to be planted already as a result of advanced ticket sales. Whilst this gesture is a world away from the original intent of the Earth Day movement (the mass mobilisation for the planet), it is at least a tangible gesture; Earth Day is, after all, fast becoming a marketing ploy for most of the big corporates.
Lord Stern launched his book - A Blueprint for a Safer Planet – the day before Earth Day. “The greenhouse effect is simple and sound science: greenhouse gases trap heat, and humans are emitting more greenhouse gases. There will be oscillations, there will be uncertainties. But the logic of the greenhouse effect is rock solid and the long-term trends associated with the effects of human emissions are clear in the data,” he writes.
“The arguments from those who deny the science look more and more like those who denied the association between HIV and Aids or smoking and cancer.”
… and some of that hard science is being taken notice of, even in Govt. circles; did you know that there is an instrument before Parliament (the Flood and Water Management Bill) that seeks to substantially extend the powers of the old 1945 Act that allowed for hosepipe bans in hot summers? And it extends it quite significantly – prepare for bigger fines and much wider interpretation. Address your questions to the Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s own contribution to the debate and commitment, surely an opportunity to build upon the commitments and resolutions passed at the G20, were noticeable by their absence.
…I know it was Budget day, but some words, any words, would have been significant. I rest my case for change.
