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With Earth Day fresh in our brains, we thought it was the perfect time to feature a question posted by AquaCat586.

“If you could do one thing to help the planet or humankind as a whole, what would it be? Or if you could invent one thing that would forward the advancement of human civilization, what would it be?”

It could be something real, or something you dream up, something small, or something on a large scale. The sky is the limit! What would you do to help the planet or advance civilization? Let us know in the Comments below!

To talk about more ways to save the earth, go to the Save the Planet Message Board

— Ratha, Stacks Writer

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Vagabonds

by Darcy Pattison

Giveaway ends May 09, 2014.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

This is a newsy post for May:

Celebrating Earth Day

Authors for Earth Day.

Darcy Pattison presenting at Gibbs Magnet Elementary School, Little Rock School District, as part of her participation in Authors For Earth Day.

Darcy Pattison signing books at Authors For Earth Day event.

Student at Gibbs Elementary holding my book, ABAYOMI.

Fiction Notes: Featured SCBWI Blog for May/June

I’ve been notified that Fiction Notes will be one of the featured blogs on the SCBWI home page for the next two months. They choose about nine blogs to highlight and rotate them six times a year. I am surprised, but pleased to be included. I was the Arkansas SCBWI Regional Advisor for six years and Conference Director for 10–it’s an organization that has meant a lot to me.

Mother’s Day

Are you active on Pinterest? Here’s a new possibility for promoting your content. Pinterest has announced a Mother’s Day Inspiration Challenge.

“Create a public Pinterest board with your favorite mom memories and the things ‘mom used to make.’”
If you want to join the fun, the deadline is May 7.

The challenge is always how to take someone else’s writing/publishing prompt and make it your own! Here’s my Mother’s Day Pinterest Board, where you’ll see a couple photos of my mom and my tribute to her–plus a few classic books, of course.

In an era of great global change, it’s more important than ever to take a moment today to think about how the Earth sustains us and how we can help to sustain it in return.

We asked author Jan Reynolds, whose work we have been showcasing throughout April here on the blog and whose travels have taken her from a hot air balloon over Mount Everest to the Sahara Desert, to share a few of her favorite photos and some thoughts on celebrating Earth Day:

I chose photos for Earth Day that aren’t big landscapes on purpose. We think of Earth Day as the Earth, pristine, something separate, while in reality…

…the Earth is one big party with all kids of life on it, not just plant life and oceans. 

We are all a part of it, including man. 

So therefore, the baboon pics. Hoping we can see ourselves in the baboons, and vice versa.

Further Reading and Resources:

Don’t miss our Pinterest board of recommended books about Earth, the Environment, and Human Impact:

Raising Global Citizens: Jan Reynolds Author Study

Teaching Geo-Literacy Using the Vanishing Cultures series

Where in the World? Using Google Maps to explore the Vanishing Cultures series

Filed under: Curriculum Corner, Holidays Tagged: common core, Earth Day, environment, environmentalism, informational text, nonfiction, photos

Ecologists and entomologists. Natural history buffs. Bloggers with green thumbs. We're among many WordPress.com users focused on nature and the environment. Today, let's celebrate the work of some of these bloggers.

By Ellen Wohl

The 1960s are famous for many reasons: the civil rights movement, the first moon walk, the Cuban missile crisis, rock and roll. The 1960s were also a period when awareness of environmental degradation spread to society at large. Events such as the 1962 publication of Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s expose of pesticides, the 1969 fire on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, and the regular occurrence of smog in many of the world’s large cities helped to convince people that pollution and environmental degradation were pervasive and needed to be addressed.

John McConnell proposed a day to honor Earth at a UNESCO conference in 1969, and the first Earth Day was celebrated on 21 March 1970, the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere. This was definitely an idea whose time had come. A month later, another Earth Day was started by US Senator Gaylord Nelson. The second Earth Day took the form of a teach-in first held on 22 April 1970. Earth Day went international in 1990 when US Earth Day coordinator Denis Hayes organized activities in 141 countries. Nearly 200 countries now celebrate Earth Day, and some have expanded the observance to Earth Week. Thinking of this makes me want to paraphrase the standard answer parents give to children when they ask why we have Mother’s Day and Father’s Day but no children’s day: Every day is (or should be) Earth Day.

Students pick up trash along roadside. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Earth Day has without question helped to increase visibility of environmental issues and promote governmental and citizen responses to these issues. One indication of this response is the increasing breadth and depth of Environmental Science. Environmental science means different things to different people. Some interpret it as the systematic study of the total environment, a broadly interdisciplinary approach that draws on knowledge from diverse disciplines. Others interpret environmental science as a collection of subdisciplines that explicitly focus on the environmental component within their discipline, typically in an attempt to minimize environmental impacts. Environmental architecture, for example, focuses on green building technology using recycled and sustainable building materials and reduced energy use within buildings. Environmental history examines the development of societies within the context of environmental constraints imposed on human actions and human attitudes toward the environment. The commonality among diverse approaches to environmental science is an explicit recognition that individuals and societies exist within an environmental context defined by the weather, topography, soils, water, and plant and animal communities that interact to create an ecosystem.

Loch Vale by Drew Parker. CC BY-ND 2.0 via Flickr.

Environmental degradation was pervasive and obvious during the early observances of Earth Day. Publication of the now-famous Blue Marble photograph of Earth taken during the 1972 Apollo mission created a stunning reminder of the limited area of the universe habitable by life. More than 40 years on, many of the issues that environmental science addresses today are much less obvious, and may therefore be more difficult to bring to public attention. One of my personal reminders of this is Loch Vale, a stunningly beautiful, high-elevation lake in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Visitors to the national park have to work to reach Loch Vale. The trail to the lake winds over 5.7 miles and gains more than a thousand feet in elevation. When you arrive, you feel that you have reached someplace special, a pristine mountain lake far from the noise and crowding of the urban areas at the base of the mountains. Yet, research by many scientists over the past two decades indicates that the soil and waters of the lake ecosystem are becoming acidic, largely as the result of atmospheric nitrate deposition. These nitrates originate from the feedlots and agricultural lands, industries, and tailpipes of the millions of people living at the base of the mountains, who are out of sight at Loch Vale, but not out of reach. Without the dedicated, ongoing efforts of environmental scientists such as Jill Baron of the US Geological Survey, who has led much of the research at Loch Vale, we would never be aware of the invisible but continuing acidification of this ecosystem.

For me, the lessons of Loch Vale are threefold. First, there is more to environmental degradation than meets the eye. Some of the most thorough and persistent changes are largely hidden from casual view. Second, the efforts of environmental scientists are critical to documenting environmental changes. We can only act to mitigate environmental degradation if we are aware of it. And third, we need Earth Day more than ever. Whatever form your observance of this day takes, I hope that it includes the recognition that every day is lived on Earth.

Ellen Wohl is Professor of Geology in the Department of Geosciences at Colorado State University. She is Editor in Chief of Oxford Bibliographies in Environmental Science, Associate Editor of Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America. She has published several books on rivers and environmental issues, including Virtual Rivers, Disconnected Rivers, A World of Rivers, Island of Grass, Of Rock and Rivers, and Wide Rivers Crossed.

Developed cooperatively with scholars worldwide, Oxford Bibliographies offers exclusive, authoritative research guides. Combining the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia, this cutting-edge resource guides researchers to the best available scholarship across a wide variety of subjects.

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Image: Students pick up trash along roadside

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First published by Izaak Walton in 1653, The Compleat Angler remains one of the most original and influential books about the environment ever written in the English language. Walton’s narrative depicts a group of urbanites whose appreciation of the natural world deepens as they go fishing in the countryside north of London. In honor of Earth Day, here are some interesting facts about The Compleat Angler as an environmental text.

By Marjorie Swann

(1)   Before The Compleat Angler, fishermen were regarded as loners, but Walton’s book transformed angling into a sociable activity that draws men together through their shared experiences of the natural world.

(2)   Walton champions core principles of wildlife management, including closed seasons, size limits, and restrictions on fishing methods.

(3)   For Walton, outdoor recreation enhances spirituality:

“So when I would beget content, and increase confidence in the Power, and Wisdom, and Providence of Almighty God, I will walk the Meadows by some gliding stream, and there contemplate the Lillies that take no care, and those very many other various little living creatures, that are not only created but fed (man knows not how) by the goodness of the God of Nature, and therefore trust in him.”

(4)   Walton was an early advocate of food security. Without environmental laws to guarantee sustainable food production, Walton argues, fish stocks will drop so precipitously that the population of England “will be forced to eat flesh.”

(5)   As Londoners visiting rural Hertfordshire, Walton’s anglers are exemplary ecotourists. They treat the natural environment they visit respectfully and take care to compensate fairly the local inhabitants who provide their food and lodging.

Otter in Southwold, Suffolk, England. By Catherine Trigg (Flickr) via Wikimedia Commons.

(6)   Walton censures “conservators of the waters”—officials charged with overseeing rivers and their fisheries—who turn a blind eye to illegal (and environmentally harmful) fishing practices.

(7)   Walton’s anglers practice environmental justice by giving financial donations and most of the fish they catch to poor residents of the countryside.

(8)   Reading The Compleat Angler can also help us to appreciate how our attitudes toward the environment have changed over time. Walton regarded otters as pests that should be controlled in order to protect fish populations and in The Compleat Angler, Walton’s fishermen join an otter hunt at Amwell Hill in Hertfordshire. Otters became extinct in Hertfordshire in the 1970s, but in the 1990s, the Otter Trust successfully reintroduced otters to the Amwell Nature Reserve. The Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust is now working to improve otter habitat in the Amwell Nature Reserve by creating “fish refuges.”

(9)   In the 1890s, the Pullman Company created a special railway car for American sportsmen called the “Izaak Walton.” Staffed by both a cook and a waiter, the car could hold twelve passengers and was fitted out with dog kennels, gun racks, an ammunition room, an ice-chest for game, and a wine closet.

(10)   Walton’s depiction of a “brotherhood” of environmentally-conscious anglers inspired the creation of the Izaak Walton League of America, a mass-membership conservation organization founded in 1922 that now has more than 43,000 members in the United States and Britain.

Marjorie Swann, Associate Professor of English at Southern Methodist University, is the author of Curiosities and Texts: The Culture of Collecting in Early Modern England. She has edited a new edition of The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton for Oxford World’s Classics and is now writing a book about Walton’s Angler and its post-seventeenth-century afterlives.

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By Thomas Jundt

On this day forty-four years ago, some 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and lecture halls for an event billed as a national environmental teach-in—Earth Day.

When he announced plans for the event, Wisconsin Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson, a longtime conservationist, hoped it would gather enough attention to pressure his colleagues into passing environmental legislation that he had been struggling to push through Congress. It did. President Nixon and policymakers responded to the growing environmental fervor with some of the most significant environmental laws in the nation’s history. Although Nixon once called environmental issues “just crap,” he was a savvy politician who understood that the public mood required some sort of action.

On 1 January 1970, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law. The National Environmental Education Act, which mandated environmental education in public schools, was signed into law in October. By President Nixon’s executive order the Environmental Protection Agency came into being two months later, charged with overseeing the enforcement of federal environmental policies. The Marine Mammal Protection Act followed in 1972.

Girl Scout in canoe, picking trash out of the Potomac River during Earth Week. Photo by Thomas J. O’Halloran, 22 April 1970. Courtesy of Library of Congress

Environmentalists had urged such action for decades. The brutal light of atomic bomb flashes revealed a vulnerable planet, and key intellectuals soon recognized other ways that humans might destroy the earth. The head of the New York Zoological Society, Fairfield Osborn, warned of “man’s conflict with nature” in his 1948 bestselling book, Our Plundered Planet. Among the many planetary threats he addressed was the chemical DDT, made public shortly after the war. “The new chemical is deadly on many kinds of insects—no doubt about that,” he conceded. “But what of the ultimate and net result to the life scheme of earth?”

Big business was at the epicenter of this threat. “One of the most ruinous limiting factors is the capitalistic system,” William Vogt emphasized in his own 1948 bestseller, Road to Survival. “Free enterprise—divorced from biophysical understanding and social responsibility… must bear a large share of the responsibility for devastated forests, vanishing wildlife, crippled ranges, a gullied continent, and roaring flood crests.” Desire for stronger federal environmental regulations had been building long before Earth Day, and years before Rachel Carson’s seminal Silent Spring in 1962.

The Earth Day era’s reforms proved inadequate. Rules and regulations that worked well initially were often less effective once corporate lawyers went to work figuring out how they could be exploited, and corporate lobbyists aimed their skills at softening their impact. As Denis Hayes, hired by Senator Nelson to organize Earth Day, said years later, the new laws looked good so long as you ignored things like “graft, corruption, huge campaign contributions, friendships forged on golf links, and all of the other stickiness in the system.”

The real world bore little resemblance to a political-science text. Indeed, in 1972 Nixon moved to undermine his own EPA. The president told his aid, John Ehrlichman, to have the EPA “say a number of things designed to shock the consumer that the cost of the environment will be very high and that the air quality laws are very impractical.” The EPA complied, shaking the public’s confidence enough to reduce or delay a number of antipollution regulations opposed by the automobile industry. “Whether it’s the environment or pollution or Naderism or consumerism,” President Nixon assured a gathering of Ford Motor Company executives, “we are extremely pro-business.”

None of this would have surprised many of the Americans who turned out for Earth Day. As ecologist Kenneth Watt observed in a speech at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, “More and more people are giving up on the system. This isn’t just the young people, or the poor, or the black people. I’ve been startled to discover the extent to which white, middle-class, suburban housewives have become so frustrated and are so full of despair about the ability to have any effect on the system that they’ve given up on it.” Mary Humphrey, of the activist group Ecology Action, at an EcoFair near Los Angeles concurred: “I don’t think you’ll find anyone who really thinks the government will do something.”

Perhaps the most telling admission that the political system was not up to the task was made by prominent Senate Democrat and conservationist Edmund Muskie of Maine. “The power of the people is in the cash register,” he proclaimed in an Earth Day speech. He was right.

In a study that asked those who attended Earth Day events in 1970 what actions they would take to help the environment, the plan most frequently cited, by 40% of Earth Day attendees polled, was to change their “consumer behaviors.” In comparison, only about 8% mentioned changes in activities such as joining others to take action.

For critics, this is a troubling example of businesses’ ability to co-opt the ideals of reformers and sell them back to them as organic soy lattes. They charge those who practice personal politics through consumption with avoiding the more difficult work required to organize for traditional politics.

But the retreat to eco-consumerism is understandable. Lacking political solutions, with a two-party system beholden to the very corporations pillaging the planet, citizens concerned about the environment have turned to alternative green consumption. They are not lazy or indifferent, and they are certainly not ignorant. The fact is policy and enforcement favor business at the expense of citizens and the environment.

Organics and other products believed to be environmentally friendly exploded in popularity as producers recognized a ready market in the millions who turned out for Earth Day events across the nation. Today, nearly all consumer products seem to offer a choice of greener alternatives, and for most Americans, consumer choice remains the most popular, if ironic, expression of environmental concern.

During the Cold War Americans heard about citizens in the Soviet Union who coveted Beatles records and blue jeans. Although it might have been a desperate and limited response, we comprehended that type of counterculture consumption as an under-standable reaction to political conditions Soviet citizens felt powerless to change. Green consumption is similar, limited yet understandable. With government in thrall to corporations and chamber of commerce ideologues, as we watch the seas rise, buying a Prius seems like the only game in town.

Thomas Jundt is a visiting assistant professor of history at Brown University, and author of Greening the Red, White, and Blue: The Bomb, Big Business, and Consumer Resistance in Postwar America.

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By Duncan French and Lavanya Rajamani

As we celebrate Earth Day this year, it is timely to reflect on the international community’s commitment to halting serious environmental harm. The idea that all States have a ‘common interest’ in promoting global environmental responsibility — as evidenced most clearly through their active participation in multilateral environmental agreements — has been a cornerstone of international environmental policy for the last few decades. At the heart of this responsibility is the recognition that sovereign self-interest is enhanced, rather than compromised, through collective responses to matters of global concern. And that universal participation of diverse states in pursuit of common objectives is best secured through differential treatment of states tailored to their responsibilities and capabilities.

But this ideal of responsibility — common but differentiated responsibility — is facing serious challenge. In particular, the increasing questioning of differential treatment as a valuable tool in achieving common objectives has highlighted — if nothing else — a breakdown of previous certainties, however fragile the consensus ultimately was.

Since the 1990 London Amendments to the 1987 Montreal Ozone Protocol, differentiation in commitments and obligations of financial and technological support towards developing countries has characterised, and partially defined, international environmental law. Even among multilateral environmental agreements, the climate change regime is distinctive for the nature and extent of differential treatment it contains in favour of developing countries. The extent of this differential treatment, however, has proven deeply contentious over the years.

Indeed, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, while representing the high-water mark of differential treatment in international environmental law, is set, to come to an end in 2020. This is partly due to the deep divisions concerning the differential treatment it contains. The latest round of negotiations, under the auspices of the Ad Hoc Group on the Durban Platform (ADP) and which are to conclude in 2015, has been mandated to produce an outcome that is ‘applicable to all’. Although, ‘applicable to all’ implies universality rather than uniformity of application, the use of the term, given the political context of the negotiations, is suggestive of a shift towards greater symmetry and more nuanced differentiation between Parties. The battle over differentiation — the existence, nature and extent of it — is raging in the ongoing climate negotiations, and will no doubt prove to be one of the final issues to be resolved in Paris, 2015.

It could of course be argued that such a shift in the climate regime is but a function of larger geo-political shifts that have occurred in international relations in the past two decades; differentiation as it was originally conceived being an artifact of the period in which it was negotiated. Traditional North-South dichotomies have since disintegrated in the face of economic growth in some developing countries and the shrinking of some first world economies. Such differential treatment in favour of developing countries, especially those that are today in the middle income or higher income brackets, is an anachronism, and thus the move towards greater symmetry, it might be argued, is both natural and politically necessary. Moreover, some developed countries have become disenchanted with differentiation over time, particularly when it is rigidly structured and increasingly viewed as artificial, particularly since the global economic collapse of 2007 and the challenges faced by many ‘developed’ economies.

Whether this move in international environmental law towards greater symmetry and more nuanced differentiation in obligations for Parties, albeit with greater deference to national circumstances, is likely to either result in a more efficient approach, which in turn will promote more ambitious legal outcomes or be sufficient to appease the majority of the global South remains uncertain. Undoubtedly there appears to be a systematic dismantling of a pervasive architecture of differentiation that had assumed a stronghold in international environmental law in the past three decades.

Does this matter; should not international environmental law reflect changing political and economic realities? Should not a regime be negotiated in a manner that seeks to include as many countries as possible? And where a regime such as Kyoto has become so contested, is it not better to seek an alternative that more States can endorse?

While these are valid arguments, they do not account for the fact that differentiation was not adopted merely to improve treaty compliance or prevent a zero-sum outcome in participation. Differentiation reflected a broader ambition; that environmental obligations should be fair and equitable as well as effective. That the international community should not be allowed to neglect historic injustices, enduring differences and considerable disparities in wealth when responding to the environmental challenges. Of course, differentiation can be achieved in many different ways and with greater or more limited financial and technological assistance attached thereto. But the bedrock of differentiation — and even stringent versions of it — had seemingly been accepted. Should this now be disregarded?

There are perhaps equally valid perspectives on this matter that transcend both politics and law. But some queries do arise in this context. If the international community is a community of law, bound within a legal framework, should such a framework to be with or without a moral core? And if the former, what role does equity play and what weight should be placed on it as a characteristic of any legal system? The parties to the climate regime might be right to reconsider their approach to differentiation; but in doing so, equity must still be a valid consideration.

Duncan French is Professor of International Law and Head of the University of Lincoln Law School, UK. He was previously co-rapporteur of the International Law Association’s Committee of International Law on Sustainable Development and is presently Chair of its Study Group on Due Diligence in International Law. Lavanya Rajamani is a Professor at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. She writes, teaches and consults on international environmental law, in particular international climate change law. Her current work is in the field of treaty law (negotiation, design, architecture and interpretation), legal principles and models of differentiation in international agreements.

In recognition of Earth Day this year, we have looked across Law, History, Economics, Literature, Life Science, and Social Sciences to identify key articles in environmental studies, all made freely available.

The Journal of Environmental Law has established an international reputation as a lively and authoritative source of informed analysis for all those active in examining evolving legal responses to environmental problems in national and international jurisdictions.

Oxford University Press is a leading publisher in international law, including the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, latest titles from thought leaders in the field, and a wide range of law journals and online products. We publish original works across key areas of study, from humanitarian to international economic to environmental law, developing outstanding resources to support students, scholars, and practitioners worldwide. For the latest news, commentary, and insights follow the International Law team on Twitter @OUPIntLaw.

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Image credit: Wild Nature via iStockphoto

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I just love that Earth Day is in spring! It makes perfect sense to capture everyone's attention when they are ready to get back into the great outdoors after winter. Below you'll discover just a couple of the books that have caught my attention because of their appreciation of gardens, plants, and even weeds.

ROSS LYNCHAUSTIN & ALLYTEEN BEACH MOVIEMAIA MITCHELLBLAKE MICHAELDOG WITH A BLOGCHLOE AND HALLE BAILEYCAMERON BOYCEJESSIECALUM WORTHYKICKIN’ ITA.N.T. FARMLAB RATSGOOD LUCK CHARLIESHAKE IT UPlove our planet EVERY DAY!

— En-Szu, STACKS Staffer