APRIL 22 was Earth Day. For prairie people, it is often a spring day when the snow is finally gone and the earth is actually visible again. Farmers move toward cultivating fields. Gardeners yearn to get their hands into the soil.
Earth Day, first named in 1969, is meant to focus our attention on the natural environment. The publication of Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring in 1962 alerted people around the world to the consequences of our actions on the environment. Carson noted that our use of chemicals, our cultivation practices and our industrial processes were having a profound and negative effect on the creatures around us.
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The bad effects of many current practices continue. In fact, things have gotten much worse in the past 50 years. The largest ever global study of how nature is faring has just been completed. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, released on March 30 and available at www.millenniumassessment.org, does not make for happy reading. Thousands of scientists and environmental experts working on every continent over several years have detailed serious ecological problems.
According to the assessment, about 60 percent of the ecosystems we rely upon are being degraded or used unsustainably. And the damage is not just incremental. There is a real danger that whole systems could collapse abruptly and irreversibly. The east coast cod fishery comes to mind as a Canadian example of this kind of ecological collapse. The report warns that, unless immediate action is taken, two of the “most important drivers of ecosystem change Ñ climate change and excessive nutrient loading Ñ will become more severe.” That’s where all Canadians, but especially farmers, are big players. Our high per capita use of fuel contributes to the greenhouse effects linked to climate change. The use of nitrogen fertilizers washing into water systems makes for the “excessive nutrient load,” the scientists noted. “More than half of all the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, which was first manufactured in 1913, ever used on the planet has been used since 1985.” When the residue nitrogen is leached into water systems, it causes havoc. The nutrients encourage growth of phytoplankton and other floating plant life, depriving the water of the oxygen that is needed by fish and water organisms. Farm fertilizers and chemicals, combined with urban sewage is the recipe for the pollution of streams, rivers, lakes and oceans. The “dead zones” in water bodies like the Gulf of Mexico are increasing rapidly.
All this brings us back to our own back yards. How are we using and treating the earth? Are we conscious of the trillions of living organisms with whom we share the earth? Are we aware of the complex and multiple effects our use is having on the whole intricate web of living soil and water on which we all depend?
By changing our farming and gardening practices and our public policy, we could make every day an Earth Day.
