Earth Day 2023

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I have written about this before, and am adapting a previous post as the basis for this one. No apologies for that: the message is still just as necessary and vital. Tomorrow, 22 April, is Earth Day. First held in the US on April 22, 1970, it was opened up to the rest of the world in 1990 and now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EarthDay.org (formerly Earth Day Network) involving 1 billion people in more than 193 countries. On Earth Day 2016, the landmark Paris Agreement was signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and 120 other countries. In recognition of this many communities engaged in Earth Day actions: an entire week of activities was focused on the environmental issues that the world faces. On Earth Day 2020, over 100 million people around the world observed the 50th anniversary in what has been referred to as the largest online mass mobilisation in history.

53 years on, the message is more vital than ever. The official website leads with this statement:

“This year, we rally behind the theme Invest In Our Planet, which highlights the importance of dedicating our time, resources, and energy to solving climate change and other environmental issues. Investing in our planet is necessary to protect it and the best way to pave a path towards a prosperous future.

When we Invest In Our Planet together, we are supporting healthy, happy, and wealthy communities worldwide.”

Earthday.org have produced a brief video to announce the day, which I’m sharing with you:

When I went to YouTube to get that video I found a good many more that had been made by other organisations to support Earth Day. This one from NASA, published in 2021, struck a chord with me:

I think that tagline of Our Planet, Our Home should be engraved on all of our minds. Some appear to have forgotten the message or have never taken it to heart – unfortunately, many of those in a position to do something about the challenges the world faces fall into that category.

A while back I posted Tuesday Tunes 81: Environment, the theme of which was songs of protest against the way we are treating our planet. I won’t repeat the whole piece here, but you can follow that link if you’d like to see which songs I chose. Several of them were of similar vintage to the beginnings of Earth Day, and whilst some progress has been made in the fifty or so years since then there is still so much more we can and need to do. It was no coincidence to me that I shared those songs three weeks before my second granddaughter was born: whilst I’m 69 and have to accept that my days on the planet are more behind me than ahead of me, what kind of future will she have? What will the world be like by the time she reaches my age – in 2090 – if it still exists?

My small contribution to today is to share again three of the songs from that piece, as a reminder to us all. They are all from my usual suspects! The first is from a Cat Stevens album released in 1970, Tea For The Tillerman, which was reworked in 2020 to mark its fiftieth anniversary:

I think that video is absolutely brilliant. This is some of what I said when I played it before: “The song’s message is even more powerful now than it was fifty years ago. This is one that has never been released as a single, so may not be familiar to you, but I think it deserves to be heard. I saw him play live in 2009, as part of a series of concerts to mark the 50th anniversary of Island Records. He began with a track from his newly released album, and then played this: you could have heard a pin drop, apart from the audience singing quietly along with him. We were all word perfect, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house!” I share his concerns for my granddaughters’ future.

This next one is still one of my all-time favourite songs, almost fifty years since it was first released:

There are many live versions of this song I could have played – a couple of very good ones with Joan Baez in particular – but I chose to go again with the one I played before. Not only does this date from three days before I saw Jackson Browne in concert (though he didn’t play this!) but it was a show he shared with his long-time friend and collaborator, David Lindley (he’s the one on the pedal steel guitar). David died on 3 March, and the outpouring of heartfelt tributes to him has shown how much he was loved and respected. This is by way of my own tribute to his memory, and to how much I enjoyed his part in that concert back in 2010.

Finally – well, almost – this is the one with which I closed that selection:

And this is part of what I said then: “This was the closing track on Queen’s album, The Works. I can still recall the first time I played the album, sitting in stunned silence after it finished until the click of the needle going round and round on the vinyl jolted me back to reality. How much power is there in that two minutes of music? I think we should all play that song on a regular basis, in case we are ever in danger of forgetting its message.” It still has that same effect on me now: the power and beauty of its simplicity really enhance its meaning, to my mind.

I mentioned in that previous post another song which I had thought to include, but shied away from due to the extreme difficulty of getting a version which the record company will allow us to hear. But, on reflection, I’m playing it today in the hope that it will be available to you, wherever you are. It describes how our predecessors have invested in the planet, but not necessarily in ways which would protect and prolong its life, and it is another of those songs which is still just as relevant as a reminder today as it was in 1976 when it was first released:

That video has been on YouTube for ten years so I hope you can see it. If not, maybe this official audio-only version will play for you. The song is, of course, written from an American perspective of history, but those of us in other countries have done our bit to destroy what nature has given us, though we may not have driven out the native population in doing so. This was the closing track on what I still think is The Eagles’ masterpiece album, Hotel California. And the phrase ‘Last Resort’ is a pretty good summation of our chances at solving the climate change issues that the world faces, I think.

You may well see something about Earth Day in the news today and tomorrow. Please don’t let it pass you by. All the news we see about fossil fuels and our dependence on them, heightened by the continuing effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, should be reminding us of this every day. This isn’t just an issue for the ‘woke,’ cranks and weirdos – it affects us all and will define what kind of planet we bequeath to our dependants, or even if we do leave something sustainable for them. We don’t want this to be our legacy, do we:

57 thoughts on “Earth Day 2023”

  3. Pingback: April Skies | Take It Easy

    • It’s an album track so probably not a surprise that you didn’t know it. That new video for the reworked version shows why starting to act rather than waffle is long overdue.

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  6. Excellent presentation through words and music of one important Day in the year.
    Quite the optimistic ‘it’s not too late’…’there’s Hope yet’ theme and warning.
    (As opposed to my gloomy…’It’s all there in the fossil record’ dirge)
    Yours is much healthier.

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  7. Pingback: SatEarthDay … | Homeless on the High Desert

  9. If If we could instantly halt every war on the planet; even aside from the terrible human cost every explosion, every missile fired is polluting the air, poisoning the soil and water and often taking away precious farm land. And of course the money we have to spend on defence could be used to protect the environment.

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  10. All good tunes, the lyrics are – or should be- a revelation to those pea-brained dinosaurs who stomp all over the one piece of dirt that belongs to us all. Perhaps they don’t care to listen, still?
    ‘The Last Resort’ is a brilliant song, one of the few omnipresent Eagles tunes I could happily hear more of.

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    • If only people would listen and take these messages to heart. But while big business is still raking in its profits I can’t see anything changing any time soon.

      It is a great song, isn’t it. I can and do listen to a lot of theirs – I kind of grew up with them, as their first album was released just before I went to uni.

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  12. Reblogged this on Filosofa's Word and commented:
    Tomorrow is Earth Day 2023, the 53rd anniversary of the original Earth Day in 1970. Our friend Clive reminds us, not only with words but with music, why we MUST do a better job in taking care of “Our Planet, Our Home.” Thank you, Clive, for this perfect reminder!

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  13. HI Clive, this is an area of great concern to me too, together with the Sixth Mass Extinction. It is the subject of my latest poetry collection which is partially a huge effort to educate people about what is happening with AFrican wildlife. Where Do The Children Play? is an amazing song. I don’t recognise this track of Queen’s.

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    • Hi Robbie. There is much to concern us, isn’t there, and the threats to wildlife are high on the list. I love that Cat Stevens song and video, so powerful and moving. The Queen one was an album track and the B-side to a single, so I’m not surprised you didn’t know it. Another powerful song.

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  14. Wow, Clive … what a perfect post for the day. Your selection of tunes is spot-on … my favourite being the one by Cat Stevens, but they’re all good. The fourth video was ‘unavailable’ but I found it elsewhere, so no worries. It seems that more and more, humans are so enamoured of their ‘lifestyles’ that they cannot be bothered to change in order to save the future for their own grandchildren. Hence, they decry that climate change is a “hoax”, and this, they believe, lets them off the hook for driving their gas-guzzling SUVs, keeping their thermostat at the most comfortable setting with every light in the house on, flying off on a weekend jaunt, and tossing more plastic into the oceans and landfills. Those of us who are aware and trying to do our best get discouraged when it seems that we are the minority, that humans in general cannot see beyond the nose on their fact and don’t really care to try. Thanks for this very timely Earth Day reminder and the relevant music!

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    • Thank you, Darlene. That’s one of my favourites too, from a great album. The video is unofficial – usually the record company gets them taken down but this one has been up ten years and has over 5.8m views. It’s a super job – maybe the band like what he did with it?

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