This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.
04/06/2017 12:01 AMWe’ve come such a long way as a society, eradicating so many diseases, making leaps and bounds in technology, demanding equal rights for all citizens.
So why has something that effects every person, plant, and animal—the health of our planet—become such a politicized, monetized issue?
Baby Boomers invented Earth Day. The first celebrations were held around the world in 1970, inspiring 20 million Americans to get onboard to protect and save the environment. Many groundbreaking environmental laws followed, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act. By 1990 Earth Day had gone global, activating 200 million people in 141 countries to address these critical issues.
And today, perhaps more than ever, with threats of cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) looming large, the significance of Earth Day (April 22) and what it represents is more profound than ever.
This year’s theme is Environmental and Climate Literacy, because only by educating both children and adults about the threats of climate change and empowering people with knowledge to take action to protect the environment can we clean up our act and resuscitate our planet.
It’s often an uphill battle, but there has never been a shortage of people committed to fighting this critical fight and refusing to give up. As a result, there have also been many conservation successes, which will be celebrated at our nation’s capital this Earth Day weekend with the first Earth Optimism Summit, hosting more than 150 speakers and 1,200 scientists, artists, environmentalists, and civic and business leaders from around the world.
On a local and state level, Branford resident Katherine “Kiki” Kennedy, M.D., assistant clinical professor of Psychiatry at Yale University, is a passionate environmental activist. She is married to State Senator Ted Kennedy, Jr., who is an equal champion of environmental causes.
Kiki Kennedy knows that grassroots commitment to protecting our environment works because she’s played a big role in making it happen.
Kennedy’s first experience as an environmental activist was in 2001 when she learned about the proposed Islander East Pipeline designed to carry natural gas from Connecticut to Long Island. She was motivated by the environmental devastation she believed it would cause our shoreline communities, and helped organize and coordinate an enormous grassroots movement with multiple public hearings attended by hundreds of people. After a seven-year battle, the pipeline was denied in 2008 by a federal court ruling.
“It makes an enormous difference when people get involved,” Kennedy asserts. “The pipeline never would have been stopped without the energy and support of all these people over the years. It was an incredibly diverse group from shellfisherman to university professors. It was bi-partisan and intergenerational. The outpouring of concerned individuals working together to protect our beautiful Connecticut shoreline was truly inspiring.”
Kennedy has continued to work for environmental causes on a grassroots level over the years, joining the boards of various nonprofit organizations such as Save the Sound and the Connecticut Fund for the Environment.
“I was tired of opposing things and wanted to support things—I became proactive instead of reactive,” she says.
The effect on our state of what happens on the federal level is something Kennedy can’t stress enough, and therefore, she strongly urges citizens to demand action from our Connecticut legislators. She notes that five calls to a state representative representing 25,000 citizens has more impact than hundreds of calls to a federal elected official who has five million constituents.
Here are several of many areas Kennedy lists in which EPA funding cuts will directly impact the state.
One is losing $300,000 to test waters for bacterial levels in the Long Island Sound, which the state doesn’t have the money to subsidize on its own.
“Not only is water quality going to be impacted, but there will be health hazards and human health impacts as well,” she points out.
Another area is open space preservation.
“Madison, Branford, and Guilford [for example] have very active land trusts, which is how open space is acquired, and open space preservation will be really hard if we lose federal funding,” she says.
On the positive side, a bill before the state legislature, which would tax the use of plastic bags, versus bringing reusable bags to the grocery store could have a tremendous “two-fer” result in both protecting state parks like Hammonasset that brings in two million tourists annually, and improving the state’s economy. She explains that Connecticut uses close to a billion plastic bags a year and the five cents per bag tax is estimated to reduce that number to 500,000. Not only will this keep millions of plastic bags from polluting our waterways and roadways, the money—approximately $20 million in new revenue—will go into a dedicated fund for preserving state parks.
“It’s the plastic bag industry opposing this,” Kennedy says, “a corporation that’s making a lot of money and doesn’t want to give up their piece of the pie.”
She emphasizes that this is one area where grassroots support—contacting state legislators, and telling your friends all over the state to do the same—can make all the difference in whether the bill is passed or not.
“I believe we all want to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and enjoy a clean Long Island Sound,” Kennedy says. “Today, our air is threatened by changes to federal regulations, our well water is threatened by herbicide spraying, and Long Island Sound water quality is threatened by EPA cuts. I hope we can work together, regardless of political party, to protect the environment we share, both for ourselves and for our children.”
Amy J. Barry is a Baby Boomer, who lives in Stony Creek with her husband and assorted pets. She writes features and reviews for Shore Publishing newspapers and is an expressive arts educator. Contact her at www.aimwritect.net.