By Aaron Fairchild

Green Canopy’s Mission:
Building relationships, businesses, and homes that help regenerate communities and environments.

Last year for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, I wrote that I hoped that observing Earth Day during a time of historic global crisis would perhaps draw greater attention to the need for society to transform to be more just, equitable and resilient. It was an observation that the purpose of Earth Day needs to expand to include justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.

Today, as the dawn broke on the shoreline of spring in America, accountability for the injustice of George Floyd’s murder was served. It reminds me what can be accomplished when a large collective comes to agreement that justice can be achieved, justice in voting and representation, housing, education, policing, health care and the environment. When we come together and demonstrate compassion through accountability for injustice, we create the conditions required for justice in all its forms to emerge into the radiance of our collective demonstration, and we are blessed.

When we collectively exercise restraint of our worst and consumptive impulses, our better versions have more space to emerge throughout our lives.

This ongoing social justice movement offers an opportunity to deepen and expand the original purpose of Earth Day. Created in 1970, “Earth Day is an event to increase public awareness of the world’s environmental problems.”

I believe that examples of aligning environmental and social issues point the way to reconsider what Earth Day should be about. Environmental organizations run the risk of being seen to appropriate social justice issues as merely a means of advancing environmental agendas. Their approach must be grounded in genuine partnership and compassion and focused on the equitable and just behavior of humans in all the environments we occupy.

 Can we adjust the aperture of Earth Day’s intent to be more wholistic and inclusive of social justice, equity, diversity and inclusion?

Throughout the pandemic I have felt hope when seeing several social and environmental impact organizations and projects outwardly share the observation that the environmental movement can and must be more inclusive. Perhaps when looking back fifty years from the future, we will be able to point to this moment of enhanced social justice awareness as the catalyst of greater societal unity and positive transformation across the planet.

Below are data points of hope from many different organizations that highlight positive alignment at the intersection of social and environmental issues.

I look forward to attending both the Nobel Prize, Theater of War production as well as the MoMA exploration!

• Nobel Prize Summit: Our Planet our Future
  Theater of War productions presents at the Summit: Sophocles’ Oedipus the King on Zoom as a catalyst for powerful, constructive, global conversations about climate change, ecological disaster, and environmental justice.

• MoMA Event, 4/22 2:30pm PST: Black Reconstructions: Environmental Justice
  Architecture and community development that explores liberating possibilities for Black communities and how architecture can nurture people and communities.

• Zero Hour: Youth led intersectional solutions to climate change

• Climate Justice Alliance

• Sierra Club: Growing Stronger Together

• LEEP: Building equity from the ground up!

 
Locally:

• Carbon Leadership Forum has written several pieces highlighting the need to focus on the intersection of social justice and regenerative community development and climate change.

• Climate Solutions has been realigning their approach for a number of years now and should be acknowledge as leading many within the environmental movement toward positive social justice and equity outcomes.

  • Climate justice and the movement to end police brutality

  • Black Lives Matter

  • Why solving the climate crisis is more urgent than ever

• Washington Environmental Council should also be highlighted and acknowledge for their broadened awareness

• Washington Nature Conservancy: We're Here For A Resilient Future

• Ecotrust: Forward Progress

• Forterra

• Seattle Foundation

• Social Justice Fund

Natural Flow
af
 
Sit just above a stream, and
Listen to water flow.
Wind dances on your skin, and
Gently tickles tremoring licorice ferns
Up the spine of a mossy maple tree.
Sound, feeling, and movement harmonize
With birdsong blessings
Sprinkled into the air.
Feel this wilderness
Within you
To carry you
Throughout the day.