[E-rundbrief] Info 1971 - Earth Day Turns 50

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief Info 1971 - Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan, Democracy Now! 
(USA): As Earth Day Turns 50, Imagine a Just, Green, Pandemic-Free Future.

Bad Ischl, 24.4.2020

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

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As Earth Day Turns 50, Imagine a Just, Green, Pandemic-Free Future

Column

April 23, 2020

https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/23/as_earth_day_turns_50_imagine

By Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan

Humanity marks Earth Day’s 50th anniversary on a worldwide lockdown, 
as nature’s fury asserts itself through one of the smallest known 
particles of life, the novel coronavirus. Many argue viruses aren’t 
alive, relying on host organisms to replicate. Whether living or dead, 
the SARS-CoV-2 virus is driving us inexorably to a “new normal,” 
forcing us to adjust to its looming presence, at least until 
treatments and a vaccine become available. There are thousands of 
coronaviruses, though; defeat one, and another that jumps from bat or 
bird to human can smite us just as easily. As humans penetrate 
habitats of other species, decimating forests and other wildlands, 
zoonotic transmission–the transfer of a virus from animal to human — 
increases. The onrushing climate catastrophe promises unrelenting 
extreme weather events,  more severe and frequent. This “new normal” 
demands that we radically realign our relationship with Nature, and 
that we do it now. Waiting fifty years is not an option.

Rebuilding will require containment of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global 
solidarity will be essential. “Stay at home, save a life,” is the 
prescription. But staying at home is a privilege. The life-saving 
practice of social distancing is out of reach to hundreds of millions 
of people.

Take India, for example, the world’s second most populous country. 
“Millions of workers and migrant workers are under a lockdown, which 
is supposed to enforce social distancing, but it only enforces 
physical compression,” Arundhati Roy, renowned writer and dissident, 
said on the Democracy Now! news hour recently. “People are crammed 
together. People are separated from their families. In many places, 
they have no food. They have no access to money even. They’ve sold 
their phones. You have the sense that you’re sitting on some kind of 
explosive substance.”

Key steps toward containment are testing, tracing, and isolation. Test 
kits that yield rapid results must be developed, mass produced, and 
distributed globally, then administered without cost. Those who may 
have been exposed must be traced, adhering to strict privacy and human 
rights standards. Finally, safe, humane isolation options must be 
provided for those infected, until they are well enough to rejoin 
their community.

Look no farther than the administration of President Donald Trump to 
see how wrong it all can go. Trump first denied the pandemic, then 
called it a hoax, then rolled out testing inexcusably slowly, 
compelling a jumble of federal, state, county and municipal 
jurisdictions to compete for tests and equipment while asserting U.S. 
supremacy during his hate-filled propagandistic pandemic anti-press 
briefings. He calls himself a “war-time president,” but failed to get 
healthcare providers the gear to wage battle. His delays and lies have 
caused the deaths of so many thousands of people.

Outbreaks occur from coast to coast, from meat packing plants, where 
workers have no choice but to show up for work in hazardous, 
potentially lethal conditions, to prisons and immigrant detention 
centers, where prisoners are denied early release, or even access to 
adequate soap, water, protective gear and safe distancing from others.

In the global south, the pandemic and climate disruption are a 
double-edged sword. “In Africa, people are saying, ‘If we don’t get 
killed by COVID-19, we’ll get killed by hunger,’” Kumi Naidoo, who 
formerly headed both Amnesty International and Greenpeace, said on 
Democracy Now! “Humanity must take a hard look at ourselves about 
whether we want to build back after corona exactly what we had, or 
build back a more equitable, more just and a more sustainable world.”

Arundhati Roy echoed those sentiments in a recent essay, writing, 
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and 
imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a 
gateway between one world and the next.”

Donald Trump has pledged U.S. taxpayer money to prop up failing fossil 
fuel industries like coal and oil. In response, author Naomi Klein 
tweeted, “Dems need to counter w/ a sweeping plan to cover the full 
salaries of fossil fuel workers while they retrain for the clean 
economy. Time to wind down this abusive industry that has always 
relied on massive public subsidies.”

On the first Earth Day, in 1970, over 20 million people in the United 
States — fully ten percent of the nation’s population at the time — 
rallied for an end to pollution, for an ecologically sustainable 
economy, for a greener future. “Our goal is not just an environment of 
clean air and water and scenic beauty,” Earth Day co-founder Sen. 
Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin said that day. “The objective is an 
environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all other human 
beings and all other living creatures.”

Fifty years later, with the planet’s climate on a human-caused 
precipice, the numbers demanding change are far greater, the 
organizing is global, but the time is short.

-- 

     Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
     Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
     Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
     Wolfgangerstr. 26, 4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
     fon: +43 6132 24590, Informationen/ informations,
     Impressum in: http://www.begegnungszentrum.at