Earth Day!

It’s Your World, Why Not Celebrate?

Hard to believe that after over four decades the world is still facing the very same problems that inspired Senator Gaylord Nelson to launch Earth Day in the first place. But it’s true. Back then, in 1969, it was the Santa Barbara oil spill, which occurred after a blowout on Union Oil‘s Platform A in the Dos Cuadras Offshore Oil Field just six miles off the Southern California coast. In 2010, of course, it was BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill, also known as the Macondo blowout, which continues to plague the Gulf of Mexico. Consider the fact that the Santa Barbara spill was then the largest in U.S. history and is now ranked third behind Exxon Valdez (#2) and Deepwater Horizon (#1), and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that things have gotten even worse.

But who’s fault is it anyway? It’s easy to blame the politicians. After all Wisconsin Senator Nelson came from the very same state where the current governor (Scott Walker) seems to be doing everything in his power to roll back the clock to a time before there was even protection for people, let alone the environment. And if the tax breaks and hand slaps are any indication, our esteemed office holders remain deeply beholden to Big Oil.

At the same time, it was of course a politician that was behind the phenomena that is Earth Day. Though to be fair Nelson himself admitted “the remarkable thing about” holiday was that it basically “organized itself.”

“Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level,” wrote Senator Nelson, some years later. “We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Twenty million people participated in that first Earth Day. And back in 1970, it was only celebrated in the United States. Now Earth Day is observed in over 175 countries and celebrated by more than a half billion people every year, which, according to the nonprofit Earth Day Network, makes it “the largest secular holiday in the world.”

Not a bad legacy for a politician.

As implied though, Senator Nelson didn’t do it all alone. Among the hundreds and hundreds of staffers and volunteers in the tens of thousands of schools, colleges and universities where Earth Day birthed (originally as a “Teach-In”) was one Denis Hayes. In September of ‘69, Hayes, then a Harvard grad student, read Gladwyn Hill’s galvanizing front page article about Nelson’s bright idea in the New York Times and traveled to Washington to get involved.

According to Wiki, which cites everyone from Grist to the DailyMe, Hayes “had been student body president and a campus activist at Stanford University, [which was Earth Day co-chair Republican Representative Paul N. “Pete”] McCloskey’s district and where Teach-In board member Paul Ehrlich was a professor. [Hayes] thought he might be asked to organize Boston. Instead, [Senator] Nelson eventually asked [him] to drop out of Harvard, assemble a staff, and direct the effort to organize the United States.”

Hayes not only “recruited a handful of young college graduates to come to Washington, D.C. and began to plan what would become the first Earth Day,” but he also founded the Earth Day Network, which expanded the holiday to 180 countries and continues to serves as the primary coordinating body for the entire annual affair.

Among the many awards Hayes has received over the years are the national Jefferson Awards Medal for Outstanding Public Service, as well as the highest awards bestowed by the Sierra Club, The Humane Society of the United States, the National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Council of America, the Global Environmental Facility of the World Bank, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, and the American Solar Energy Society. To add to the accolades, in 1999 Time Magazine named Hayes “Hero of the Planet.”

While Nelson and Hayes surely planted the initial seed, and we will forever be in their debt, Earth Day, as the good Senator said, truly grew from its grassroots. And it is those grassroots that have sustained the Day for over four decades. Whether it’s a kid in a classroom with a piggy bank full of hope, a gaggle of co-eds high on freshman altruism, the mayor of a major city who listens to his conscience, or the leader of a country who relishes her duty as a steward, people take Earth Day personally. Then again, how could they do otherwise? It’s as simple — and as necessary — as the water we drink and the air that we breathe.

Here in South Florida, the grassroots coalition of the willing is as vast and as varied as the peoples that live here. It includes school kids and surfers, politicians and restaurateurs, club-goers and hoteliers, various Chambers of Commerce and just as many City Halls. Some of the groups number less than a dozen; others are chapters of organizations that reach into the millions. But no matter who they are or where they come from, they’ve all got one thing in common: a burning desire to make this Earth a better place to live on.

Of all the groups with a very vocal and vested interest in our Earth is the Surfrider Foundation, which boasts 11 chapters throughout the Sunshine State, including one in each in Dade (Miami), Broward and Palm Beach counties.

You may remember Surfrider from the role they played in last year’s Hands Across the Sand, the global protest that numbered 873 events, 774 of them in the U.S., including all 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. Oh, and the 99 events organized outside of the U.S.? They included protests in another 35 countries, among them Australia and Tanzania, Bangladesh and Croatia. According to Mike Gibaldi, Chairman of the Miami Chapter, which boats 240 members of its own, Surfrider served as the lead organization for a group of coalition partners that included Urban Paradise, Environment Florida, One Sky, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club and Oceana.

As the Hands Across the Sand website so helpfully states:

“Hands Across the Sand is a movement made of people of all walks of life and crosses political affiliations and the borders of the world. This movement is not about politics; it is about the protection of our coastal economies, oceans, marine wildlife and fisheries. The accidents that continue to happen in offshore oil drilling are a threat to all of the above.  Expanding offshore oil drilling is not the answer, embracing Clean Energy is.”

Noting Surfrider’s commitment to the world’s shores, it only makes sense that they’d embrace an action like Hands Across the Sand. In fact, if you read the mission statement on Surfrider’s own site, you’d think the two were born of the same mother:

“A little over 25 years ago three people in Malibu, California found out that their favorite wave was about to be destroyed. Think about that for a second. Think about something you love… something that gives you enjoyment. Taken away. First Point, the quintessential perfect, California wave was about to be destroyed. Those three people organized and worked with the local municipalities until they were satisfied that their efforts to preserve that iconic wave would be successful. This was the genesis of Surfrider Foundation.”

To put it more succinctly:

“[Surfrider’s] mission is the protection and enjoyment of oceans, waves and beaches through a powerful activist network.”

The next Hands Across the Sand takes place on June 25th at noon. You can bet your longboard that Surfrider will again be out front palm-to-palm-to-palm.

Of the growing number of South Florida restaurants that proudly source locally is Sustain, whose progressive American fare has made it a favorite in Midtown and beyond. Brian Goldberg owns the joint with managing partner Jonathan Lazar, and from the reclaimed-wood tables to the wood-roasted whole fish, both they — and chef Alejandro Pinero — have shown that caring for the environment can be at once comfortable and delicious.

According to the mission statement sent by Lazar, “the idea for Sustain started very humbly and on a small-scale. Beliefs about and practices related to sustainability took root in the farmer markets where we shopped and the kitchens of our homes where we prepared daily meals. The simple recycling of a plastic bottle. The composting of organic table scraps and garden-grown vestiges. The rehabbing of a salvaged table large enough to seat many friends and family. And from the realm of the personal, we extend out these valuable lessons learned in order to supply food, drink, and other necessities of life at the large-scale. Sustain sustains…through food, architectural design, and daily operations, and always with an eye to the preservation of environments, natural resources, and communities.

Sustain features modern American fare — classic comfort food that is creatively re-imagined.”

Chef Pinero recently participated in the dreamy Dinner in Paradise, that monthly bacchanal which takes place in the Redlands’ at Paradise Farms. And it is from Paradise that Sustain sources much of its fare, including the ever popular 50-mile (radius) salad. Some foodies have compared Pinero’s menu to that of the James Beard Award-winning Michael Schwartz, he of Michael’s Genuine Food and Drink. When you consider that Paradise Farms owner Gabriele Marewski first created a local organic farm-to-table series of dinners in collaboration with said Chef Michael the comparisons are apt. Both Pinero and Schwartz are committed to the flavor of the food itself, rather than to the flavoring of the food, and even with a source as robust as Paradise it’s only natural there’d be some similarities. But rest assured Pinero has his own way with a plate, and Sustain is as unique as the concept they’ve created.

Of our politicians, the Miami Beach City Commission seems to be the greenest, and it’s positively bursting with the kinda visions that have made Earth Day such a celebratory affair. Leading the way are Commissioners Jerry Libbin and Michael Gongora, both of whom will be receiving ECOMB’s prestigious Emerald City Awards at this year’s Greenraiser. Gongora in fact seems to have been especially galvanized of late, and you can often find him pitching in on yet another local beach clean-up or pressing environmental issues, of both land and water, from the rostrum. The indefatigable commissioner has also been behind a variety of green building initiatives, and as Vice Mayor Gongora created and chaired the first City of Miami Beach’s Green (now known as the Sustainability) Committee.

Of course every Florida politician has but to look at the career of the great Bob Graham to see how best to steward our environment. Graham, who served Florida for 38 consecutive years, from both state houses, the Governor’s mansion and U.S. Senate, was called “a champion of the environment” by President Obama, who appointed him to co-chair the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. But the president’s kind words didn’t prevent Graham from releasing preliminary reports criticizing the Obama administration for mismanagement of its response to the disaster. And while Florida’s all-time favorite office-holder is now most heavily involved in training the next generation of leaders at the University of Florida’s Bob Graham Center for Public Service, the great good man remains committed to Florida’s natural wonders in a way everyone could stand to emulate.

As he wrote in the St. Petersburg Times earlier this month: “Florida is a treasure which we have the privilege of enjoying with the responsibility to preserve and enhance that treasure for future generations.” It is a thought that should be taken to heart each and every day we’re lucky enough to be roaming this wondrous planet of ours. On Earth Day, it should also be taken to soul.

Happy Earth Day, everybody!

Tags: featured

Category: COVER, GREEN