I remember the day well, April 22, 1970.  I went along with a couple of friends to Belmont Plateau in Philadelphia’s Fairmont Park.  The area of the park had been the scene for many “Be-In’s.”  Taken from the sixties term of “sit-in” where youth congregated and sat in a close circle to make their voices heard for any of the various causes of the day, from ending the war to legalizing pot, a Be-In was simply a Sunday happening where concerts where held, much in the tradition of Woodstock, and the “In Crowd” got to “Be-In.”  Now that I have fully exhausted my vernacular of the day – I hope you are impressed – let me get back on topic.  Most of us came for the cause, to protest the incessant polluting of the planet we all lived on.

This was the time when the Tear Drop That Changed a World was about to air and the youth of America felt called to the causes of esoteric and altruistic foundations, when consciousness was expanded and the bomb threatened to end all that was known.  Some of the more disciplined minds of the day looked at the thick, exhausts of the multitude of factories and wondered where it all went.  With slide rulers – computers were yet to emerge for the common person – they calculated the results of all that pollution, a new term for the day, and what they saw scared the daylights out of them.  Sooner then we all could imagine we all were going to choke to death, literally, on our waste.  And nobody seemed to care.

Take it to the youth, they were always ready and eager to jump on any cause worth while.  And they did.  April 22 was dedicated “Earth Day,” a day when we were to take into consideration the health of the planet.  Prediction of doom flourished and the year 2000 seemed an ideal twelfth hour.  

The conservative body saw Earth Day as a threat and quickly denounced it as UnAmerican.  The battle between common sense and greed began and  our children and the future were held at stake, each side claiming to have the interests of those children and the future at heart.

Once “sides” were drawn up and a battle of sorts began I knew we were in trouble.  How can anyone ignore the common sense of the situation and deny the coming result?  I stood among those that day in Fairmont Park knowing that the battle would be a long one and wondered if enough people would see the light before it was permanently blotted out with smog.  I would never have imagined that I would be well into my fifties and the year 2000 would be long past before the “cause” caught on enough to convince me that our planet has a chance.  Of course, I also thought pot would be legal by now, too.

Each year at this time I take stock and wonder what resolution could I avow, like we do on New Year’s Day, and believe might make a difference in my life and to the planet.  If I can quit smoking for my health and become a vegetarian from the belief of no harm to any living creature that feels, I can take one more step each year to improve my relationship with the world I live on.   Green may finally be cool but it is necessary if we are to make it to the year 3000 (Hey, 2000 is long gone so might as well mark the next cool sounding year).

Up to this point the few have managed to make some noticeable changes.  Los Angeles doesn’t have a cloud of doom hanging over it, the highways don’t look like back alleys and the oceans are finally being looked at as a  growing risk from the decades of dumping and maybe getting on the list of salvation.  Now that going Green is becoming cool, I am thrilled at the acomplishments we can achieve.

Now if we could just legalize marijuana….