April 17, 2000

Subject: SPECIAL EARTH DAY COMPILATION: Earth Day is now! (Leonardo DiCaprio chairing Earth Day 2000's big event on the Washington, D.C., Mall + Tune In! Earth Day Hits TV! + Make your Earth Day promise online + Gloom and doom with a sense of humor: GRIST MAGAZINE, a project of Earth Day Network

Hello

Next Saturday is Earth Day all around the world and 4500 groups in 181 countries have now joined the Earth Day 2000 campaign.

According to Denis Hayes, director of the Earth Day Network, the Earth Day 2000 campaign promises to bring together half a billion people around the world to put forth "new environmental visions for a sustainable future."

As someone from the Earth Rainbow Network commented to me a couple days ago:

"The issue is: "It's the environment, stupid!" as you have said. I don't know how we can take care of the environment unless we abolish war and recognize the divinity within Mother Earth. We need the same affection for a river, as we have towards a baby."

There are myriad ways people are going to be celebrating their affection and care for Mother Earth before and during Earth Day.

Please do your bit by reviewing the following and reporting on it to your readers and viewers.

And remember... Everyday is Earth Day!

Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000

P.S. For more information on Earth Day events happening in your area on Earth Day, April 22, please visit http://www.earthday.net/dir/event.asp and for global press releases about Earth Day events around the world go at http://www.earthday.net/pressroom/pressreleases


Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000
From: Earth Day Mom <earthday@earthdayspirit.org> Subject: MSNBC - Growing up greener - Earth Day 2000 targets youth

http://www.msnbc.com/news/394171.asp

Please visit the URL for: photos, layout, and links...

Leonardo DiCaprio and Earth Day organizers hope to get more youth involved in environmental issues. Growing up greener Earth Day 2000 targets youth

By Francesca Lyman SPECIAL TO MSNBC

April 12 - He played the bohemian, idealistic hero on a doomed ocean liner. Now Leonardo DiCaprio is stepping up to a more titanic real-life role - figurehead for millions of young activists on environmental and health issues. Can global warming and America's fossil fuel habit be turned around? With Leonardo and a blossoming new generation, Earth Day organizers hope so.

LEONARDO DiCAPRIO made a promise last November when he announced becoming chair of Earth Day 2000's big event on the Washington, D.C., Mall: to invest in a hybrid car that runs on both electric and gasoline. "You fill it up at any service station, it gets 60 miles per gallon and has 80 percent fewer emissions than most cars," says DiCaprio.

"It runs like any other car." No sweat. But to tackle global warming, we need to do much more, he said, such as "to dramatically increase the amount of power we get from clean sources, like the sun, the wind and bio-fuels."

DiCaprio is pushing Earth Day 2000's focal issue: Given our choices at this turn of the century, do we continue with "19th century production methods that harm the environment and create myriad health problems?" Or instead, do we turn to "new clean, innovative technologies?"

This millennial year, perhaps more than ever, Earth Day organizers are reaching out to youth. The timing couldn't be better: Just this week, the group Environmental Defense released a survey that found the "younger generation is remarkably skeptical about past progress [on air and water quality], with 62 percent believing conditions are worse today and only 29 percent seeing conditions as better."

Readying himself for April 22, the 30th Anniversary of the watershed event he helped launch as a college student, Denis Hayes, director of the Earth Day Network, revealed only faint traces of exhaustion over a campaign that promises to bring together half a billion people around the world to put forth "new environmental visions for a sustainable future."

"Young people bring energy and fresh ideas, and if you say 'try it,' they'll go out and actually do it," says Hayes.

While government leaders wrangle over whether to institute carbon or gas taxes to create disincentives for using coal, gas, and oil, the fossil fuels, young people are coming up with better tactics, he says. "Students began organizing boycotts of recruiters from petroleum companies and others that contribute to the problem," he says. Egged on by students, he adds, universities began voting shareholder resolutions against companies in the Global Climate Coalition, the major lobbyists against carbon cuts in the Kyoto climate change negotiations. "Now British Petroleum, Shell, GM and Ford have all stepped off the coalition, and they have no corporations left - just trade associations."

As the original environmental movement grays, it is being supplanted by younger and younger ranks of activists undertaking scores of volunteer actions, from reforesting urban trees, to weeding and removing invasive species, to adopting parks and putting on "sustainable energy" fairs. In contrast to the typical profile of an environmentalist with greater buying power - the suburban white woman - the new face of the movement, says Michelle Ackermann of Earth Day 2000, is "young and multicultural."

DiCaprio, Ackermann says, was chosen by Earth Day campaigners as an apt "role model for young people," and because of his stated interest in nature from an early age.

The actor also knows how thorny environmental issues can be, from personal experience. During the filming of The Beach, in which DiCaprio stars, a local environmental controversy erupted after the film producers arranged for a beach location to be stripped of native vegetation and replanted with imported palm trees. The area as since been restored and the issue resolved.

EDUCATION CURRICULA
During the last 10 years, environmental education curricula have spread widely in U.S. schools. And since Earth Day 1990, some 70,000 schools nationwide actively commemorate the event.

"More teachers are integrating environmental stewardship into all subjects, says Rene Alexander, an environmental educator in Seattle schools. "You have more and more examples of teachers presenting what they learned - about pollution in air or streams - to city hall."

For the young, says Ackermann, conservation and care for nature is intuitive: "They haven't lost the wonder of discovery." Not yet jaded by pessimistic forecasts, they can still be shocked into action.

"They're astounded to realize the connection between our habits and the destruction of the world," says Alexander. "Here, kids are learning about native birds, fish and amphibians and how they are dying out thanks to explosive housing growth.

"They can't believe that plastic comes from oil," she says. "Some tell me, 'I'm not buying a 'Lunchable' anymore, because I know how many resources they expend - paper from trees, plastics from oil, water to make both, and aluminum - for a single serving."

A YOUTH-LED MOVEMENT

Much of the new movement is youth-led. "Instead of being generated by parents to keep kids busy, it is driven by passionate young people who are really concerned about the environment," says Diana Smith of the YMCA's Earth Service Corps, which has involved 20,000 young people in a variety of community leadership efforts in 30 states since its inception 10 years ago.

Seattle's YMCA teenagers staged a mock debate in which they role-played different interests at the Kyoto climate change talks - some acting as oil company lobbyists, others as representatives from developing countries. Out of the event, says YMCA's Fran Lo, came a commitment from clubs to "encourage carpooling, and walking or biking to school."

The last 10 years, too, has seen the rise of even younger children involved in volunteer and activist efforts, much of it environmental. The Big Help, a program of the Nickelodeon TV channel, boasts that since 1994, when the program began, more than 28.5 million children have pledged more than 300 million child-hours to volunteer efforts - from helping the homeless to cleaning up parks.

INFECTIOUS ENERGY

"Kids have an incredible amount of energy that goes untapped," says Marva Smalls of The Big Help, "Their energy is infectious. You can't show up at one of their events without being drawn into picking up a shovel yourself." Lauria Moen, a school resource conservation specialist, agrees. "Waste is a habit--we like to waste resources. But kids don't have them yet," says Moen, who has seen the 19 schools in the Kent School District in Kent, Wash., save some $38,000 a year in energy, water and solid waste. Much of that savings has come from student-run recycling and conservation "patrols" that enlist kids for spot inspections of teachers and staff.

Adults? "I find them very, very difficult to motivate," says Moen. "It's only been through the spirits of the kids that I've ever seen any action."

Francesca Lyman is an environmental and travel journalist and editor of the American Museum of Natural History book, "Inside the Dzanga-Sangha Rain Forest" (Workman, 1998).

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