Sara Haile-Mariam

Full remarks here.

“Now, the choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline. We can remain the world’s leading importer of oil, or we can become the world’s leading exporter of clean energy. We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc across the landscape, or we can create jobs working to prevent its worst effects. We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors, or we can confront what countries in Europe and Asia have already recognized as both a challenge and an opportunity: The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy.

America can be that nation. America must be that nation.”

Jimmy Seidita narrows down the list of green things that we might all do to help the environment to one thing:

“OK. Ready for your one hard thing that you must do to save the planet? Here it is:

1. Actively support the Obama administration’s efforts to limit carbon emissions.

That’s it. That’s all you need to do. But really do it. Talk to your friends, relatives and neighbors about it. E-mail your congressman about it. Tell him you want action on climate this year, even if it means paying a little more for gas or electricity. Write your local newspaper. Join a climate organization. Wear a button. Put it on your Facebook. Twitter it, goddammit, whatever that means. Do all that, and you can leave the old light bulbs in place, give your kids the bottled water, and drive your SUV to the end of your driveway to pick up the mail. Just do everything you can to help the administration pass its climate program this year.”

I gave this speech a few months ago. It seemed appropriate to re-post some of it today.

We are living in an extraordinary moment in history, a moment that demands more of us as individuals, a moment that demands that we prioritize our collective destiny over that which might be expedient or easy. Generation after generation, the American people have often been faced with unsolicited challenges and through it all we have never backed down from a fight…we have never cowered in the face of adversity. In this moment we must stand up to insist that we continue to carry on this great tradition; that we will be relentless in our pursuit of solutions, that we will be determined on behalf of the future and that we will be successful, that we must be successful, because when we stand up for energy sustainability we’re not only standing up for the environment but for everything that exists in relation to it.

For the freedom to breath clean, for right to drink clean water, for the quality of life of the next generation. We’re standing up to insist that taking care of this planet that we call home is a prerequisite to pursuing happiness…to recognize that something larger calls on our attention.

So it turns out Rush Limbaugh is not so into the whole planting trees, recycling, dressing up as planet earth approach to celebrating Earth Day.

The alternative?

“Normally, those of us with sanity sit Earth Day out, while schools frighten kids with apocalyptic tales of the earth being destroyed, because we enjoy a high standard of living.”

They aren’t apocalyptic tales….they are tales that speak to the importance of responsible living. There’s no reason why we can’t be responsible about our energy consumption and efficiency and still be living the good life.

Case and point- the new Toyota Prius hybrid.

To his credit, Rush did spend part of this morning thanking “pioneers who have contributed to the well-being of the planet.”

Still, it’s not really enough to just thank them, we have to continue their efforts in a way that’s consistent with what we’ve learned since.

The debate about the legitimacy of global warming is over. So at this point we’re not really discussing the potential of a problem, we’re gauging the breadth of our response. We know that climate change is real, we know that energy reform is necessary, what we haven’t yet decided, is how much we intend to do about it.

A look back on the first Earth Day (Via CAP)

The Article was published in 1970- checkout how young people responded then:

Campus Ritual. Expectedly, youth predominated at most of the ecological happenings and teach-ins across the U.S. At 1,500 campuses and 10,000 schools, students, teachers—and sometimes parents—observed Earth Day by studying such previously recondite subjects as hydrocarbons and acid drainage from coal mines. Much of the day was given to theater and ritual. At the University of Wisconsin, 58 separate programs were staged, including a dawn “earth service” of Sanskrit incantations.

Car wreckings—followed by interment of the beasts—were a common protest against the internal-combustion engine. Some students at Florida Technological University held a trial to condemn a Chevrolet for poisoning the air; they tried to demolish it with a sledgehammer, but the car resisted so sturdily that the students finally shrugged and offered it to an art class for a sculpture project.

Some 1,000 students at Ohio’s Cleveland State University worked throughout the city gathering litter and loading it into garbage trucks. They ended the day by marching to the almost pestilentially polluted Cuyahoga River. Standing at the spot where Founding Father Moses Cleaveland allegedly landed in 1796, a student held aloft a plastic bag full of garbage and intoned: “This is my bag.” Another student, dressed as Cleaveland, rowed up, declared: “This place is too dirty to build a colony,” and double-timed back down the river to the almost equally scabrous Lake Erie. In Letcher County, Ky., part of the most ravaged section of Appalachia, 1,200 students buried a trash-filled casket. A young Denver group called CARP (Citizens Concerned About Radiation Pollution) gave the Colorado Environmental Rapist of the Year Award to the Atomic Energy Commission.

Some Green Laughs From the Past via Huffpost.

The Tapped Folks over at American Prospect take a look at Veggie Gardens in DC.

Robert Redford: Making Every Day Earth Day

“Some of us who fought for this country’s first environmental protections make the mistake of assuming that because young people today are less likely to be found marching down the National Mall as the shopping mall, that they must not care as deeply as we did when we were young. But apathy has not replaced idealism. Idealism just looks a little different these days.”

I’ll post some “Green Reading” throughout the rest of the day.

Friedman addresses the need to approach our economic future while making sure to deal wit our environmental inefficiencies.

“These are the pillars of a climate bailout. Yes, some have upfront costs. But all of them would pay long-term dividends, because they would foster massive U.S. innovation in new clean technologies that would stimulate the real Dow and much lower emissions that would stimulate the Climate Dow.”

Blackout Sabbath- I’m still pretty overwhelmed. The energy was amazing, the atmosphere and the music were incredible. In addition to the musical guests that I detailed in a previous post Jeannene Garofalo also provided us with some much needed comedic relief. You can checkout my remarks as prepared after the jump. I deviated from the script a bit but for the most part what you read is what you would have seen.
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