One Earth Day Is Not Enough
When I founded Groundwork, I wanted to give voice to the big questions.
- What does it look like when a society regards the Earth as the source of everything they love?
- How could people in the modern world treat the Earth as more than something be just barely sustained, an obstacle on the path to profit?
- What would it take to envision a future that is not just a minor adjustment to the destructive ideologies of the present?
I like to think of Earth Day as a deeper version of Mothers’ Day. The Earth provides us with everything we need to live fulfilled lives. If you look around, everything you own was either grown or mined somewhere on the Earth. The Earth accepts anything from us (clearcuts, pit mines, pollution) and continues to find ways to give. Just as with Mothers’ Day, a single day is not enough—cultivating a relationship of care for the Earth requires more than a small acknowledgement.
This Earth Day, we know that you might be receiving emails proposing a handful of small actions to reduce your carbon footprint. Switch to LED light bulbs. Divest from fossil fuels. Take shorter showers. It is no surprise that most suggested actions today do not put the Earth at the center. Instead, they put the Earth as a secondary consideration, centering instead the goal of mimicking our present way of life.
An Earth Day Reflection
Today, we want to offer you something different. At Groundwork, we believe that a real move towards sustainability requires more than some new technologies: it also requires shifts to our attitudes, habits, values, and patterns of thinking. Today, we offer you a reflection to spur the imagination. If you have a few minutes, we recommend finding a quiet space to write responses to these questions:
- In your family history, who was the last generation to live with a deep, caring relationship with the Earth that could be sustained for multiple generations? What mindsets, values, and practices did those ancestors have that that shaped their care for the Earth? What impact did it have on the people to live like that?
- Make a list of the top 10 “environmentally friendly actions” that you hear about. For each action, write a little about whether the Earth is at the center of that action or whether the Earth is secondary, with the action being primarily proposed because it mimics current visions of how people should live. How could we re-center the Earth?
For a little more inspiration when answering these questions, you can check out our most recent Bite-Sized Book about tools for climate thinking. Read it for free here!