April 2020 Matters & 50th anniversary of Earth Day
Earth Day Network (earthday.org)
"Earth Day 50, April 22 1970-2020. Together We Can Stop Climate Change. Speak Up. Show Up. Act. Earthdayinitiative.org . Text "Earthday" to 31996.
#EarthRise2020
April 24 Arbor Day (always the last Friday of April)
Plant Your Tree Today: plantabillion.org
nature.org/earthday
April 26 John James Audubon's birthday
Ten-year anniversary of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Gulf Coast.
Green documentaries recommended in "The Green Issue" of Health magazine for April:
...Ice On Fire
...Tomorrow
...Forks Over Knives
...Our Planet
...Chasing Ice
Some outcomes of Earth Day 1970:
...the defeat of several anti-environmental villains in Congress in the first "Dirty Dozen"
election
election
...Congress passed the Clean Air Act in December.
...passage of the Clean Water Act, and
...the Endangered Species Act, and
...the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and
...the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and
...the banning of DDT, and
...the removal of lead from gasoline, and
...the passage of the Toxic Substances Control Act and
...the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
(source: Denis Hayes, national coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970 and the founder of the Earth Day Network, in Sierra magazine for March/April 2020).
BOOKS
Activist Theology. Robyn Henderson-Espinoza.
American Birds: A Literary Companion. Edited by Andrew Rubenfeld and Terry Tempest Williams.
Climate Justice and Community Renewal. Brian Tokar and Tamra Gilbertson, co-editors, forthcoming.
Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future. Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann.
The Culture of Feedback: Ecological Thinking in 70s America. Daniel Belgrad.
Dangerous Earth: What We Wish We Knew about Volcanoes, Hurricanes, Climate Change, Earthquakes, and More. Ellen Prager.
Digging Up Armageddon: The Search for the Lost City of Solomon. Eric. H. Cline.
Environmental Justice in a Moment of Danger. Julie Sze.
Erosion: Essays of Undoing. Terry Tempest Williams.
Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change. Ashley Dawson.
A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety: How To Keep Your Cool On A Warming Planet. Sarah Jaquette Ray.
From Disposable Culture to Disposable People: The Unintended Consequences of Plastics. Sasha Adkins.
The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-in Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation. Adam Rome.
Health in the Anthropocene: Living Well on a Finite Planet. edited by Katharine Zywert and Stephen Quilley.
Home in America: On Loss and Retrieval. Thomas Dumm.
Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life. Kari Marie Norgaard.
Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism. Victor Wallis.
Sea Level Rise: A Slow Tsunami on America's Shores. Orrin H. Pilkey and Keith C. Pilkey.
Toward Climate Justice. Brian Tokar.
Weather: A Novel. Jenny Offill.
Yellow Earth. John Sayles. (novel).
EVENTS
50th anniversary of Smithsonian Magazine, 1970-2020
Smithsonian Institution's (SI) Earth Day conservation summit: Smithsonianmag.com/earthoptimism .
SI Conservation Initiative at earthoptimism.si.edu .
Festival of Homiletics: Preaching a New Earth/ Climate and Creation. Atlanta, GA May 18-20, 2020.
RESOURCES
The American Prospect (Ideas, Politics & Power) 2019 Bonus Issue, Special Report: The Practical Path to Saving the Planet/The Urgent Realism of Radical Change.
Climate Justice Alliance
Inside Climate News
Sunrise Movement
US Climate Accelerator
Women's Earth Alliance (WEA)
Zero Hour
Pandemic references
Corona
Virus
Disease-
19 (2019)
Epidemics: The Impact of Germs and Their Power Over Humanity. Joshua S. Loomis
Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present. Frank M. Snowden.
The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. Toby Ord.
The Rules of Contagion. Adam Kucharski. (forthcoming)
Quotation
"If you find something you really love and think about all the time and that gives you joy, don't worry about what's going to happen." James Allison, immunologist, TIME magazine, 2/17/2020.
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Mike Ochs finds common ground between religion and politics in his concern for the environment.
Politically he self-published the first "Greens Bibliography" of the English-language literature on the international Green Party movement (1989), the project for his Master of Liberal Arts in International Studies degree at Lock Haven (PA) University. He also helped plant the seeds for the Green Party of PA at that time, and remains a cyber-activist with it.
For a monthly newsletter of the ecumenical United Churches of Lycoming County (PA), he has written the "Creation Corner Column" since 1997. It became a blog in 2011 at
He received a B.A. degree from Gettysburg College in 1965.
