22 APRIL – World Earth Day

We must act decisively and responsibly

The idea of Earth Day, dedicated to safeguarding our planet, marks the origin of the environmental movement and has its roots in the 1960s: Those of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King, the protests against the war in Vietnam, the chart-topping Beatles, the legendary Jimi Hendrix and Rachel Carson, a biologist, who in 1962 published Silent Spring in which – in order to prevent spring from disappearing from the face of the Earth – she demonstrates that there are several alternatives to the irresponsible poisoning of the planet by chemical industries.

A LITTLE REMINDER OF WORLD EARTH DAY

American activist John McConnell – with a passion for peace, religion and science – was the creator and founder of Earth Day and the Earth Society Foundation. In 1969, at the UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, he proposed a day dedicated to our planet to promote peace and raise awareness of the need to preserve ecosystems and thus all forms of life on our planet Earth. His is also the unofficial flag of the Day.

Flag proposed by John McConnell

A list of clear principles and responsibilities was signed, a commitment to the environment and to caring for the Earth. That document was signed by 36 world leaders, including UN Secretary General U Thant, anthropologist Margaret Mead and writer and educator John Gardner.

BUT IN THE MEANTIME THINGS HAVE GOT WORSE

Man is a constant threat to the Earth, to himself and to all the species that inhabit it.

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, 75% of emerging human diseases come from animals. This is because man is overdoing it with intensive livestock production, consumption of wild animals, deforestation, urbanisation and uncontrolled land use. All these activities deprive many animals of their living space and reduce them to such a state of suffering that they cease to be liked by the viruses and bacteria living in their organisms, prompting them to ‘migrate’ to other more hospitable organisms such as man.(www.tecnicadellascuola.it)

It is not surprising to find, in the message released by UN Secretary-General António Guterres for World Earth Day 2021, a precise call to action “to protect our planet from both the coronavirus and the existential threat of climate disruption”. A cry of pain that the very young activist Greta Thunberg from her Summer 2019 Climate Strike 50 years after the initiative of the first activist John McConnell-has managed to revive, with a global impact perhaps equal to Pope Francis’ 2015 Encyclical on Integral Ecology Laudato Sii.