Earth Day 2020
On the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day and the 5th Anniversary of the founding of the Center for Earth Ethics, we invited everyone to join us in sharing their voices for the Earth.
The Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary and the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University launched Earth Stanzas, an interactive poetry project in honor of Earth Day. Earth Stanzas drew inspiration from eight poets who explored the beauty, depth and interconnectedness of the Earth, and invited readers to engage with the poems and discover their own poetic voices. Participants were able to create “erasure” poems from a pool of primary texts, including excerpts from an International Panel on Climate Change report, historical documents such as the Haudenosaunee Address to the Western World, and Pope Francis’s Encyclical, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home.
The 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day commemorated the historic 1970 event when 20 million Americans gathered across the country to raise awareness of the growing destruction of our planet. Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act. Fifty years later, as these protections are under threat, we once again sounded the alarm for dynamic action.
We were grateful to be joined by Poets for Science, The Academy of American Poets, The Climate Museum, Earth Day Network, and many others in giving voice to the Earth.
We’ve also included links below to past Earth Day events around the web and reflections from the 2014 Religions for the Earth gathering, which inspired the creation of the Center for Earth Ethics.
