Philly Earth Day, 1970: "A few older people, a few blacks, and some of the poor. But mainly white, middle-class young people, as much aroused by the music as by the damage done to the environment by pollution."

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Not much has changed.

What we see in this fascinating 1970 CBS News segment was that the first Earth Day was a "happening" created by a group of leftist and anti-capitalist students and academics (one of whom would famously later murder his girlfriend and hide her decomposing body in his closet), but was to a large degree co-opted even then by the "establishment" - liberal politicians (note Edmund Muskie's blathery speech to the celebrants), the media, churches (note the "prayer for the earth" at one service) and, yes, even the very businesses allegedly responsible for creating all that carbon monoxide.

Hello?

And the narrator nailed it when he described the scene as "as much like a rock-music festival as a teach-in on the environment."

One surprising thing, at least for the modern viewer, was the skepticism and ultimate refusal of Philadelphia's "black groups" to participate. "You're part of a Nixon trick," said one leader to the organizers.

These days, members of the black liberal establishment have learned that's in their interests to hitch their particular causes (those of the black liberal establishment) to all the others of the day, from climate change to pussy hats.  

The interview within the segment with Earth Day director, Edward Furia, ends with a sort of earnestly-expressed threat:

We're trying to get public officials and politicians to think in terms of what is the social cost to society. And if they do nothing, and if this thing becomes a lie, then I think the Earth Week committee may be replaced by a different kind of committee. Instead of a revolution of values, then the other revolutionaries will take over.

Furia would later work within the system as a lawyer, EPA administrator and entrepreneur CEO of a company that makes electric vehicles.

Since then, anti-establishment/establishment "movements," usually featuring rock-music, have become a sort of permanent feature of post-Christian Western cultural life.

On the bright side, and in fairness, some things have changed. The United States, including its cities, is much cleaner than it was almost fifty years ago (though we might debate the reasons why). Notably, it is in the countries that were earlier taken over by "the other revolutionaries" that massive environmental catastrophes are still, to use Furia's words, a thing.

But I suppose one could make the argument that, say, China's Three Gorges Dam, was as much motivated by profit (from new Chinese "state capitalists" and Western banks) as ideology.

The crisis continues.

Pope: “'But I belong to this religion, or to that one …' it doesn’t matter!"

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"I care!"

On Sunday Pope Francis made another "surprise" visit, this time to an Earth Day celebration in Rome, sponsored in part by Focolare. 

Focolare is officially a Catholic group, though some have called it an indifferentist cult.

However, in fairness to Focolare, it wasn't a representative of that group that made the statement of the post title, but the Vicar of Christ himself.

Who needs Focolare when we have Francis?

Here are some excerpts from the Pope's "impromptu" remarks on an outdoor stage (from a Crux translation of a Vatican provided transcript):

Thanks much for everything, and now I’ll do a little improvisation. I’ll leave aside what I wrote down to say to you, and say instead what comes to me … 

Listening to you speak, two images came to me: The desert, and the forest. I thought, these people, all of you, all, are taking up the desert in order to transform it into a forest. They go where there’s desert, where there isn’t hope, and they do things to make a forest of this desert. The forest is full of trees, it’s full of vegetation, but too disorganized … but, life is like that. Passing from the desert to the forest is the beautiful work you do! You transform deserts into forests! (applause) Then, one can see how to regulate certain things in the forest … but there’s life in it, while in the desert there’s death. 

There are many deserts in the cities, deserts in people’s lives who don’t have a future, because there’s always – and I’ll underline a word here – always there are prejudices, fears. These people live and die in the desert of the cities. You perform a miracle with your work of changing the desert into a forest: Go forward that way. 

What’s your plan of work? I don’t know … We’re approaching you, and we’ll see what we can do. Life has to be taken as it comes. It’s like a goaltender in soccer: You have to take the ball where it’s kicked … it comes from here and there. But you must not be afraid of life, or afraid of conflicts … 

...The desert is ugly, both the desert in the heart of all of us, as well as the desert in the city, in the peripheries, which is also an ugly thing. There’s also a desert that’s in the gated neighborhoods … It’s ugly, but the desert is there too. We must not be afraid to go to the desert to transform it into a forest, where there’s exuberant life, and to go dry the many tears so that everyone can smile.... 

...I’ll give you an assignment to do at home. Look at the faces of people when you go into the street: they’re worried, everyone is closed in on themselves, they lack a smile, in other words they lack tenderness, social friendship … they lack this social friendship. Where there isn’t social friendship there’s always hatred and war. We’re living a piecemeal Third World War, everywhere. Look at the geographic map of the world, and you’ll see. 

...There’s a word not to forget in this world, where it seems that if you don’t pay you can’t live, where the person, the man and woman that God created to be the center of the world, to be for that matter at the center of the economy, are thrown out and instead we have at the center a god, the god of money. Today at the center of the world is the god of money, and those who can approach to adore this god … (applause) … they approach, and those who can’t finish in hunger, in illness, in exploitation … Think about the exploitation of children, of young people... 

...Look, these are the things that come to my mind. How to do this? Simply in the awareness that we all have something in common, we’re all human. And in this humanity, we can get close to each other to work together … “But I belong to this religion, or to that one …” it doesn’t matter! 

Let’s all go forward to work together, respecting each other, respecting! I see this miracle: the miracle of a desert that becomes a forest. Thanks for everything you do!

Story for Earth Day: "A Narrow Escape" by Lord Dunsany

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"A Narrow Escape" from Tales of Wonder, 1916, by Lord Dunsany

It was underground.

In that dank cavern down below Belgrave Square the walls were dripping. But what was that to the magician? It was secrecy that he needed, not dryness. There he pondered upon the trend of events, shaped destinies and concocted magical brews.

For the last few years the serenity of his ponderings had been disturbed by the noise of the motor-bus; while to his keen ears there came the earthquake-rumble, far off, of the train in the tube, going down Sloane Street; and when he heard of the world above his head was not to its credit.

He decided one evening over his evil pipe, down there in his dank chamber, that London had lived long enough, had abused its opportunities, had gone too far, in fine, with its civilisation. And so he decided to wreck it.

Therefore he beckoned up his acolyte from the weedy end of the cavern, and, "Bring me," he said, "the heart of the toad that dwelleth in Arabia and by the mountains of Bethany." The acolyte slipped away by the hidden door, leaving that grim old man with his frightful pipe, and whither he went who knows but the gipsy people, or by what path he returned; but within a year he stood in the cavern again, slipping secretly in by the trap while the old man smoked, and he brought with him a little fleshy thing that rotted in a casket of pure gold.

"What is it?" the old man croaked.

"It is," said the acolyte, "the heart of the toad that dwelt once in Arabia and by the mountains of Bethany."

The old man's crooked fingers closed on it, and he blessed the acolyte with his rasping voice and claw-like hand uplifted; the motor-bus rumbled above on its endless journey; far off the train shook Sloane Street.

"Come," said the old magician, "it is time." And there and then they left the weedy cavern, the acolyte carrying cauldron, gold poker and all things needful, and went abroad in the light. And very wonderful the old man looked in his silks.

Their goal was the outskirts of London; the old man strode in front and the acolyte ran behind him, and there was something magical in the old man's stride alone, without his wonderful dress, the cauldron and wand, the hurrying acolyte and the small gold poker.

Little boys jeered till they caught the old man's eye. So there went on through London this strange procession of two, too swift for any to follow. Things seemed worse up there than they did in the cavern, and the further they got on their way towards London's outskirts the worse London got. "It is time," said the old man, "surely."

And so they came at last to London's edge and a small hill watching it with a mournful look. It was so mean that the acolyte longed for the cavern, dank though it was and full of terrible sayings that the old man said when he slept.

They climbed the hill and put the cauldron down, and put there in the necessary things, and lit a fire of herbs that no chemist will sell nor decent gardener grow, and stirred the cauldron with the golden poker. The magician retired a little apart and muttered, then he strode back to the cauldron and, all being ready, suddenly opened the casket and let the fleshy thing fall in to boil.

Then he made spells, then he flung up his arms; the fumes from the cauldron entering in at his mind he said raging things that he had not known before and runes that were dreadful (the acolyte screamed); there he cursed London from fog to loam-pit, from zenith to the abyss, motor-bus, factory, shop, parliament, people. "Let them all perish," he said, "and London pass away, tram lines and bricks and pavement, the usurpers too long of the fields, let them all pass away and the wild hares come back, blackberry and briar-rose."

"Let it pass," he said, "pass now, pass utterly."

In the momentary silence the old man coughed, then waited with eager eyes; and the long long hum of London hummed as it always has since first the reed-huts were set up by the river, changing its note at times but always humming, louder now than it was in years gone by, but humming night and day though its voice be cracked with age; so it hummed on.

And the old man turned him round to his trembling acolyte and terribly said as he sank into the earth: "YOU HAVE NOT BROUGHT ME THE HEART OF THE TOAD THAT DWELLETH IN ARABIA NOR BY THE MOUNTAINS OF BETHANY!"