Earth Day

This being Earth Day, I think that it is appropriate to make a few, pointed comments.

The first Earth Day (1970) had two Co-Chairs. Demorcatic Senator Gaylord Nelson (WI) and Republican Congressman Paul N. "Pete" McCloskey (CA). There was, at that time, a national consensus that the environment was important and that the public could influence our politicians to do something about it. Note, the both major parties and both houses of Congress were involved in the leadership.

While Sen. Nelson died in 2005, Pete McCloskey is still with us and continues the fight that they started then. On Friday, April 20, McCloskey was honored by the dedication of a ~100 acre McCloskey Preserve in San Mateo County. This is a dedication of private lands to be set aside in perpetuity.

At the dedication, McCloskey remarked that "the key to preserving the planet may rest in the nation's youth.

I think that this should be a goal of the Green Party CA. We should be using environmental activism to reach out to young people, as McCloskey advises, and making sure that they are able to continue living in the world that we have enjoyed for all of our years. We should be setting up the equivalent of a Youth Ministry, except the goal is not the salvation of the soul but the salvation of this country.

Meanwhile, the old soldier in McCloskey demands that he continue the fight, as as such his law firm has joined the qui tam law suit against Maxxam Corporartion and it's owner, Charles Hurwitz, over the logging of the Headwaters Forest in N. California.

In the meantime, the national Green Party did not even produce a press release regarding Earth Day (though they did acknowledge the Step it Up campaign.) And I could not get any response to my question on this subject from Starlene Ranking, a National Media Committee CoCo. It would seem that the consciousness of environmental issues is there, but not the sense of urgency that our current situation requires.

I am looking out my home office window. The sun has just come out after a night of showers. A row of rosemary has provided feed to some white crowned sparrows and a flock of bush tits. A pair of spotted towhees are grubbing underneath the shrubs. It feels like all is right with the world, but I know it isn't.

• The GPCA Environment Email list has dwindled to having only 5 people and only a few are active.
• The national EcoAction Committee is floundering to the point where the last conference all only had 5 people and spent most of it's time discussing whether the committee should continue and, if it did, what it should be doing.
• The Steering Committee for the GPCA can not even agree on an Agenda for our next General Assembly and those proposals which would have dealt with substantive issues are not even being considered.
  

We are floundering for lack of leadership. Most people now consider the Democrats as being the "green party". We have lost our identity and need to return to the ideals on which this party was founded.