Earth Day Celebration in Jim Thorpe

The Carbon County Democrats for Change sponsored a booth at the Earth Day celebration in Jim Thorpe.  We had a sign that read  “The most important thing you can do for the environment:  VOTE!”  We also collected signatures on a petition for Rep. Heffley asking him to withdraw his name as a sponsor of HB 1576, a bill which would weaken the state’s endangered species law.

While we did get a few hundred signatures, I came away from the event depressed and discouraged.  I remember the very first Earth Day, and I remember when being an environmentalist was mainstream politics.  In Jim Thorpe today the movement seemed marginalized--tattooed hippies, tie-dyed stoners--the kind of people who couldn’t organize a Sunday School picnic, let alone a movement to halt global climate change or the Keystone Pipeline.

Earth Day should not be about drum circles and herbal tea and costumes.  Did the festival attendees understand that we are in a crisis?  We don’t need this kind of silliness.  We need some hard-edged political organizing and political action, and I didn’t see much evidence of that today.