Below you can view the ad that is said to have sparked the environmental movement that began in earnest on the first Earth Day in 1971. My thoughts on that, and what and who I believe can and will rekindle it.
"Crying Indian" AdI was just a young girl in the early seventies, but a young girl who was very concerned about the planet and what it would look like when I had children years from then. By 1971 when the first Earth Day was celebrated and the first "Crying Indian" ad was played on that day, I had already written to President Nixon asking him to please do something to help us make this world cleaner for our children and us, offering my own solutions as a girl of twelve. When I saw the ad on television, I cried. I cried because as a child I felt as though I was helpless in doing anything to stop the toxic pollution that people were spewing into rivers and lakes and into our air even though I knew it would effect me years later... but after seeing that ad I knew that even as a young girl of 12, I could make a difference.
I then helped put together neighborhood cleanups through my school that were very successful and earned me and my classmates a commondation from the community. I then made it my personal goal to always live my life in the service of my planet to do all I could in my power as one person to walk the walk in my life, educate others, and to speak out for our planet.
The link above allows you to view the "Crying Indian" ad from the seventies if you wish to. It requires Real Player to view. I just viewed it and shed a tear again, because now that I am a woman and have a child past the age I first started becoming involved in this issue, I still see garbage on shorelines, pollution in our air, and toxic waste being spewed in our water.
And now we and our children face an even more urgent crisis as we continue to rapaciously spew CO2, methane, and other gases into the atmosphere daily, not only polluting our water and air, but also now bringing about changes to the very biosphere we live in that threaten our ability to sustain ourselves. How truly tragic that in over thirty years time people even though they recognize the problem exists, STILL continue the behavior that makes the crisis. This simply cannot go on.
What will our children be doing in thirty years time? Will they have a planet worth living on? Will they thank us for taking the steps necessary to preserve this planet for them to hand over to them to then preserve for their children? Will they even remember
An Inconvenient Truth, and the warning but hope that Al Gore brought to everyone regarding the resources we had and the will we needed to save our planet?
It is in OUR hands to make sure that they do remember, and it is not a soundbite, a joke, nor something to be used as a political maneuver. It is our lives. And it is because of ads like the one above that moved me and that transcended politics and spoke to the human heart and conscience, that the conscience of our country was awakened then regarding our environment and just how important it is in relation to all else.
It must be awakened again and this time for good. Rachel Carson started it, ads like the above sustained it, and I now believe Al Gore (who has surely found his calling) and An Inconvenient Truth will rekindle it, but again, only if WE have the will.
Where has that spirit and passion of thirty years ago gone? We must find it, and we must pass it on to our children. Otherwise, no ad in the world will be able to undue the damage we have done and will continue to do by our own hand to our only home. And that will be worthy of many tears.
How many more generations will have to shed tears for the failings of the past? Where it concerns our Earth, failure now is not an option.