The Earth

The Earth is both our home and our provider. It’s meaning for us depends on how we interpret our human, social, and civic relationships with it. All humans exist as participants in the earth’s dynamics, from breathing its air to consuming its provisions. Our social relations with the Earth span the range from indigenous groups who see the Earth as sacred to some modern groups who see it as a commodity. We are dwellers on the Earth and our dwellings exist as homes in a natural and urban environment and yet they can be treated as nothing but real estate. Still, since Earth Day in 1972, there have been “environmental victories” in preserving the Earth’s vitality, and yet today as citizens we face a stark alternative between a stable or “hot house” Earth. Making the right choice depends on breaking through the climate of injustice that now prevents us from both repairing our relationships with each other and from restoring the Earth as a habitat for all living things.

Puasa Untuk Bumi

Tema peringatan Hari Bumi (Earth Day) tahun 2021 ini adalah Restore the Earth. Pulihkan Bumi. Satu-satunya planet di tatasurya yang bisa didiami oleh manusia ini sedang sakit. Satu di antara beberapa cara untuk memulihkannya adalah puasa. Puasa dari aktivitas yang mencemari Bumi. Siapa yang harus puasa? Setiap orang sebagai individu dan orang sebagai pengelola masyarakat, yaitu pemerintah (pusat dan daerah). Ada tiga matra yang harus direstorasi dengan cara puasa, yaitu tanah, air dan udara.

Circle of worry song video clip as a campaign medium to save the environment from damage

The Earth Day is commemorated every April 22nd to remind the importance of environmental protection. The environment that sustains our lives is getting weary over time. A group of filmmakers compiled a video clip consisting of environmental destruction events. This video clip is used as the background of a song entitled Circle of Worry. The purpose of this song clip production is to campaign for environmental protection. The video clip was made using creative collaboration method. The video was then distributed through social media and online platforms to reach broader audience, especially the younger generation. Through this media, it is hoped that the younger generation’s attention and awareness will emerge to better protect their environment.

The Consumer Movement

The chapter opener follows the efforts of Senator Gaylord Nelson to advance an environmental agenda. Such events as the Santa Barbara oil spill and Cuyahoga River fire were symbols of manmade environmental disruptions. Nelson inspired Earth Day as a way to engage public opinion. Many on the New Left and the environmental movement now saw consumerism as the source of dirty air and water, toxic fumes, poisoned foods, and littered landscapes. That was a point of view Ralph Nader shared. No book on consumerism could ignore Nader’s role in the rise of the consumer rights movement in the 1960s. This section looks at Nader’s background and the controversy he triggered when he published Unsafe at Any Speed, as well as his commitment to wide-ranging consumer rights and environmental projects. The following section looks at “hip consumerism” to show how the counterculture influenced personal styles and gender identities. It features Stewart Brand, who with Ken Kesey launched the “Trips Festival” in San Francisco and then went on to produce the bible of alternative consumption, The Whole Earth Catalog.

Project Earthrise: Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Conference of inVIVO Planetary Health

The “Earthrise” photograph, taken on the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, became one of the most significant images of the 20th Century. It triggered a profound shift in environmental awareness and the potential for human unity—inspiring the first Earth Day in 1970. Taking inspiration from these events 50 years later, we initiated Project Earthrise at our 2020 annual conference of inVIVO Planetary Health. This builds on the emergent concept of planetary health, which provides a shared narrative to integrate rich and diverse approaches from all aspects of society towards shared solutions to global challenges. The acute catastrophe of the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn greater attention to many other interconnected global health, environmental, social, spiritual, and economic problems that have been underappreciated or neglected for decades. This is accelerating opportunities for greater collaborative action, as many groups now focus on the necessity of a “Great Transition”. While ambitious integrative efforts have never been more important, it is imperative to apply these with mutualistic value systems as a compass, as we seek to make wiser choices. Project Earthrise is our contribution to this important process. This underscores the imperative for creative ecological solutions to challenges in all systems, on all scales with advancing global urbanization in the digital age—for personal, environmental, economic and societal health alike. At the same time, our agenda seeks to equally consider our social and spiritual ecology as it does natural ecology. Revisiting the inspiration of “Earthrise”, we welcome diverse perspectives from across all dimensions of the arts and the sciences, to explore novel solutions and new normative values. Building on academic rigor, we seek to place greater value on imagination, kindness and mutualism as we address our greatest challenges, for the health of people, places and planet.

Enhancing Environmental Literacy in Palestine: Reflecting on Secondary School Students’ Knowledge and Attitudes: تعزيز الثقافة البيئية في فلسطين وفقا لمعارف واتجاهات طلبة المدارس الثانوية

In the past, since the first Earth Day, organizations have endorsed the development of well informed and environmentally literate citizen as the answer to our threatened environment. According to many Environmental Education (EE) experts, knowledge and attitudes are important components of environmental literacy (EL), especially if the goal of environmental education is to change behavior. In our study, a questionnaire with two parts was randomly distributed to 49 selected schools which included 942 10th grade students in Palestine, with a 100% response rate. Results showed that participants had favorable attitudes toward the environment which ranged from 57.5 to 74.8 out of 100 points. The environmental knowledge scores are topicality, fragmentary or incorrect, which range from 45.72 to 67.36. Significant differences were found in the level of EL scores by gender. Educational implications and recommendations are discussed.

Impact of air pollution and smoking on COVID-19: a review

Background The 21st century already witnessed many deadly epidemics and pandemics. The major ones were respiratory tract infections like SARS (2003), H1N1 (2009), MERS (2012) and the most recent pandemic COVID-19 (2019). The COVID-19 story begins when pneumonia of unknown cause was reported in the WHO country office of China at the end of 2019. SARS-CoV-2 is the causative agent that enters the host through the receptor ACE2, a component of the renin–angiotensin system. Main body of the abstract Symptoms of COVID-19 varies from patient to patient. It is all about the immunity and health status of the individual that decides the severity of the disease. The review focuses on the significant and often prevailing factors, those that influence the lung function. The factors that compromise the lung functions which may prepare the ground for severe COVID-19 infection are interestingly looked into. Focus was more on air pollution and cigarette smoke. Short conclusion The fact that the forested areas across the world show very low COVID-19 infection rate suggests that we are in need of the “Clean Air” on the fiftieth anniversary of World Earth Day. As many policies are implemented worldwide to protect from SARS-CoV-2, one simple remedy that we forgot was clean air can save lives. SARS-CoV-2 infects our lungs, and air pollution makes us more susceptible. In this crucial situation, the focus is only on the main threat; all other conditions are only in words to console the situation.