Happy 50th Earth Day!

“There is a new level of emotional intensity now that climate change has gone from a distant threat to a clear and present danger,” said Sierra magazine editor Jason Mark of the young people who took to the streets last year for the climate strike. “They’re pissed off — there’s no other way to characterize it. Young people feel like their very future, if not their current present, is on the line.”

Mark was one of my interviewees for "Earth Day at 50: Mulling the Blue Marble's Next Half Century," a piece I wrote for the Bay Area Monitor to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day.

I asked several noted environmentalists working in different fields — U.S. Forest Service filmmaker Steve Dunsky, author Mary Ellen Hannibal, editor and urban farmer Mark, and Ph.D. candidate C.N.E. Corbin — about the history and importance of Earth Day, and the role it might play in the next 50 years.

“Earth Day is a timeout to consider our fundamental reliance on earth and its natural systems, and then to consider what we can do individually, or ideally collectively, to safeguard those systems,” said Mark.

Happy Earth Day, a day to appreciate our Blue Marble and what we can do to protect it.