Earth Day – the annual celebration of our planet – is today.
Jay Ingram, former host of Daily Planet on the Discovery Channel, says Earth Day has aged a bit since being declared in the 1970s.
“And yet, this year I do feel, and I don’t know whether it’s just me, but the fact that the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) just come out with another report which fundamentally said it’s do or die now, to preserve the world in any sort of form we’re familiar with,” he said.
Ingram said he thinks people are taking it more seriously and are more understanding now that we as humans have to do more serious things to help the Earth.
Earth Day began in 1970 in the United States and has been celebrated worldwide in the years since.
“I think one of the inhibitory or … damaging things we carry around in our minds is that somehow nature is out there, and we’re here, and we’re separate from it,” Ingram said. “Well, we’re not separate from it.”
Ingram said the sooner we understand we are a part of nature, we’re going to start making it easier to own up to the fact we have responsibilities and start having positive impacts on the earth. He said there are people can be turned off by those who may be fanatical about things like climate change, and he talked about how to bridge the two camps.
“There is a climate change scientist named Katherine Hayhoe, and she is starting to argue, and I think that’s good, is that don’t think about changing people’s minds,” Ingram said. “What you have to do is include them in the conversation, no matter what their views. Just have them as part of the conversation.”
Ingram said if you don’t include them, they’re not listening to you and you’re not getting anywhere. Earth Day, for Ingram, should be a time and a day when you try and have a conversation with a group of friends, and taking one step to do any of 1,000 things to help the earth.
“More important is to loop in some people that might not agree with you… and see if you can get them thinking and talking about it,” he said. “That’s the way movements grow, and I think thats what has to happen.”