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Natural Awakenings Dallas -Fort Worth Metroplex Edition

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Letter from Publisher: Earth Day is Every Day

Bernice Bulter

Celebrating this years’ Earth Day feels especially poignant as Americans face the threat of imminent elimination and dismantling of our nation’s environmental protection apparatus.

The fox in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hen house, Scott Pruitt, is a self-proclaimed climate change skeptic and leading advocate against the EPA’s pro-Earth agenda. President Trump’s recent budget sent to Congress contained a 31 percent cut for the EPA, accompanied by elimination of 3,200 jobs and funding for the Clean Power Plan, a large part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research grants, the United Nations Green Climate Fund and other significant efforts working to save life on our planet from poisoning.

Add in a renewed assault on our lands and waters as a result of overturning previous protections and denials placed on fracking, the Keystone pipeline and clean stream regulations, and everyone is in trouble. The momentum gained in educating sensibilities toward caring for our home planet, laboriously built over decades, is seriously endangered.

Still, I cling to the prayerful hope that because of the long, hard fight to document, prove and gain widespread acknowledgement of the harm caused to the environment by the rising carbon emissions behind global warming already altering every aspect of life, it won’t all be so easily let go. I like to think that the demand for correction of past and present eco-horrors by millions of citizens that, like me, have made systemic changes in their way of living to protect and preserve Earth’s life-sustaining ecosystems will continue the good fight.

Honoring our environment is more than an intellectual exercise; it’s a spiritual charge and commitment. Creation is a good gift from our Creator, designed for us to live in harmony with and depend on forever. Our charge is dominion, not domination; we are to wisely steward and thrive in it.

Until now, I’ve felt that the world had begun to take this spiritual charge seriously and produce demonstrable progress with milestones like the Paris climate accord, the Pope’s climate encyclical, widespread availability and pricing equalization of renewable energy and the farm to table food movement. Now is the time to intensify our commitment, underscoring the mutual benefit of environmental protections and economic prosperity.

Earth Day is every day. Each day we have an invested opportunity to cherish Mother Earth. In this light, each month Natural Awakenings of the Dallas Metroplex strives to bring to bear timely and insightful information to remind, encourage and empower us all to do so. This month, we highlight more good things we can do locally; from creating eco-landscapes to greening our homes. Our second in a series on Green Neighborhoods of North Texas looks at Oak Cliff’s Bishop Arts district. If you are looking to make a move, keep an eye on this series, presented every couple of months.

As always, we hope you’ll find information here that inspires and enables you to live a more green and healthy lifestyle.

Blessings,

Bernice Butler, Publisher