Simple Suggestion #281... Make every day Earth Day

Yesterday was a strange Earth Day, to be sure. I wonder what might have happened if there was no corona virus keeping us all apart. Marches and rallies? Earth Day parties and concerts? Pollution as per usual?

In an effort to mark it in some way, two days before the event, I went out and decorated our front sidewalk with chalk, reminding people about Earth Day, and inviting them to give her a some love by joining in my little Resurrection Project (click here to read that moodling) and cleaning her up.

In many ways, our covid confinement is cleaning her up. Because we are staying home, there are less fossil fuel emissions, some waterways are cleaner in usually crowded tourist places, our songbirds are heartened by a reduction in noise pollution and are singing more, and other species are enjoying some places from which they've been displaced by humans. Scientists are noticing these things... are we?

I can't help but hope that we will learn something from all of this, though I worry that once covid restrictions are lifted, humans will return to our old ways with a vengeance, as if to make up for all the "deprivations" of being stuck at home.

While we have a chance to notice the good things this enforced simpler living is doing, I'd like to appeal to our higher natures to consider carrying many of the good habits we are developing now into our covid-free future. Things like one grocery trip a week, and saving our elderly neighbours trips to the store. Going for long walks. Spending love miles instead of air miles. You can probably name a dozen other things you might be doing differently that are having a small but positive impact on our planet's health.

It's been a long while since I've posted a Simple Suggestion, mainly because, after 280 of them, it seems I've covered a lot of the possibilities... But every day can be an Earth Day, and global climate change won't stop just because we're all stuck at home for a few months. We really need to live Laudato Si... and do more to protect and care for our common home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=KIVuISZGdug

Let's let this covid crisis and our 50th Earth Week be a dress rehearsal for how we're going to save our planet from further disaster.

If you're looking for more Simple Suggestions, click here.