Two years ago I spent time with my daughter’s family in San Francisco during April, a celebratory time for me encompassing several birthdays along with National Poetry Month and Earth Day. It was post Covid and I hadn’t visited the city in four years. The downtown business areas were quite muted with vacant storefronts and a sense of loss. However, the abundant natural areas of beauty remained as did vibrant residential neighborhoods. Its eco-friendly consciousness from outstanding public transportation to recycling, composting, and plastics mitigation efforts are ingrained in the city’s mindset. From an environmental standpoint, our national efforts to address climate change would be far more advanced if we followed San Francisco’s example.
As good as it might sound, San Francisco demographics have changed in the 20 plus years spent dropping into the city for extended visits. Perhaps it’s best summed up on a bus ride during a recent stay. A disheveled rider was getting increasingly aggravated at an oblivious woman speaking loudly on her cell phone. Approaching a stop at the University of San Francisco’s campus, he stood up to exit and stopped for a moment until he caught the woman’s attention. In a resigned but firm voice, he said, “San Francisco use to be a bunch of hippies creating poetry; now it’s a bunch of techies creating ignorance.”
His comment highlighted one of the main causes of gentrification and affordability issues in San Francisco…the Silicon Valley impact that’s turned the city into one of the nation’s most expensive to live. The San Francisco to San Jose corridor Is the home of Google, Apple, Meta, Tesla, Intel, and Salesforce to name a few. Google has its own commuter transportation system, and it’s not an unusual sight to see a 20 something with a backpack and skateboard running to catch a “Google bus” to work. This is not a generational knock, because in fact, income inequities cross generations. But tech worker salaries generally support a livable wage, while the well documented homeless issue gets amplified to gain political points. It should be noted that the Boston to Washington DC corridor competes with Silicon Valley with high wage jobs in tech, finance, and biosciences, which has contributed to our own fast track to unaffordable housing.
This brings me to the present confluence our 55th year celebrating Earth Day on April 22; and the end of the Trump administration’s first 100 days in office on April 30th. The Earth Day movement has had a sustained impact protecting our planet from its beginning in 1970 including: an extension of the Clean Air Act(1970); Federal Water Pollution Control Amendments(1972); and the Safe Water Drinking Act(1974) to name a few. In total over 20 acts and amendments to improve the earth’s environment were put in place in the 70’s& 80’s. As Trump’s first 100 days in office conclude, he has executed a number of Executive Orders directly or indirectly setting back environmental progress. By the end of his first term he rolled back 98 environmental rules and regulations; 14 of those are still in place. It’s a moment calling for poets to weigh in; balancing our angst, hopefully with hope.
My reflections on Earth Day harken back to the Apollo Space Program, highlighted by Apollo 11’s moon landing on July 21, 1969. Previous Apollo space missions were the first to send back beautiful photos of our planet…a striking mix of colors, oceans, land mass, and cloud cover totally consumed by the darkness of the universe. While some perspectives credit the Vietnam War protests as the inspiration for the first Earth Day, I believe those photos from outer space sparked a spiritual bond for protecting our planet and helped sustain a worldwide movement spanning over a half century.
Currently though, this administration, at the behest of Silicon Valley’s(Elon Musk) influence, is gutting programs and firing thousands of federal workers. Many of those summarily dismissed aspired to their work through initial engagement in the military, Peace Corp, City Corp, and other outgrowths of the Earth Day movement. They support programs contributing to our well-being, creating a civic mindset critical to successful nonprofit and volunteer programs in our communities. The ongoing gutting of the federal workforce before understanding the consequences is an act of ignorance at best; immorality at worse. It reminds me of Emily’s soliloquy at the end of Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town’. Emily laments, “I didn’t realize all that was going on in life and we never noticed. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?” Responding to Emily, the play’s Stage manager replies, “No…Maybe the poets, they do some.”
This piece also appeared as an opinion piece in The Daily News of Newburyport
https://newburyportnews-cnhi.newsmemory.com/?publink=0b7d92c6a_134f95c