SOURCE:
https://www.newsday.com/opinion/newsday-opinion-the-point-newsletter-1.44034774
By Michael Dobie - April 22, 2020
For environmentalists, Earth Day is an annual high point, an opportunity to expand the environmental coalition by reaching out beyond those active in the task of protecting the planet.
But in the year of the coronavirus, with social distancing and sheltering in place, the highly anticipated 50th anniversary of Earth Day is a more “somber” occasion, as several local environmentalists put it.
“This originally was planned to be a giant day of recognizing the environmental movement and now it’s barely a fizzle,” Citizens Campaign for the Environment executive director Adrienne Esposito told The Point. “Some of the groups had cleanups planned, nature walks, environmental announcements, lobby days, none of which is happening. So it’s strange and it’s also disheartening.”
Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters, cited increased online engagement in calling the day “Virtual Earth Day.”
“There is much higher engagement than normally, everybody is home on their computers, it’s different and interesting,” Tighe said, while acknowledging that it’s not clear how much of the audience are people not already involved in the environmental movement. “As far as activists go, it’s different, these different ways of engaging. We’re a lot more relying on social media and Facebook, but I think people are still interested in this.”
Adding to the sense of a world off-kilter: In shutting factories and taking cars and trucks off roads, the virus is indirectly making the air cleaner, seen perhaps most profoundly in India, where people in smog-riddled cities are breathing more deeply and some Indians can finally see clearly the Himalayas. And the animal world is reclaiming space vacated by sheltering humans, with wild goats roaming through a town in Wales, coyotes trotting through San Francisco, and boars spotted in Barcelona.
“The lesson is not that the air improves with pandemics,” said Kevin McDonald of The Nature Conservancy. “The lesson is that nature is more resilient than most of us think.”
There has been another upside to the virus, McDonald said. The Nature Conservancy runs the Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island, a 2,039-acre jewel of tidal creeks, forests, fields and marshes crisscrossed with trails. McDonald said the preserve is getting more visitors these days, appropriately social-distanced on trails looping in one direction, and that nature itself has been the draw.
“For people, it’s been really important to be out, and they all have a look on their face: Are we going to be OK?” McDonald said. “In that respect, nature has been reaffirming, it’s been reenergizing, and it’s been, for some, hopeful.”
That’s a message that resonates on any Earth Day.
