There’s a green itch I’ve been needing to scratch and the confluence of Earth Day, The Flaming Lips and environmental calamity provided all the material I needed for a satisfying post. There’s more in the works so stay tuned…
On April 22nd 1970 some 20m Americans joined Senator Gaylord Nelson’s call to celebrate the first Earth Day, an event described in the New York Times as an “interlude of national contemplation of problems and man’s deteriorating environment”. Since then the holiday has expanded in both size and scope. The Earth Day Network estimates that more than 1 billion people in 174 countries participate in Earth Day activities, making it the “largest secular civic event in the world”.
The need for national contemplation of our environmental problems has never been more dire, given the escalating threat of climate change. We are steadily nearing the temperature at which “potentially large numbers of extinctions” and “major increases in hunger and water shortage risks” will take place, according to a 2006 report from the UK Meteorological Office.
Yet in this critical year, with the Kyoto Protocol up for renegotiation and serious carbon regulations finally on the table in America, the most significant public event planned by the Environmental Protection Agency was a rock concert featuring the Flaming Lips over the weekend
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Photo credit: wumpiewoo (via Flickr)
