Former United States President and supporter of The Nature Conservancy's Georgia program, Jimmy Carter is the founder of The Carter Center committed to bettering the human quality of life throughout the world.
You can read Jimmy Carter's complete essay and see personal messages of hope from your favoritie celebrities when you celebrate Earth Day 2006 with The Nature Conservancy.
My boyhood days in Plains in the 1930s and 40s were shared among the family farm, church, schoolhouse, and nearby woods. In each place, I learned crucial lessons that eventually would coalesce into the values that have sustained me throughout my life. My excursions into the woods to observe wildlife, hunt, fish, or just wander the paths gave me a lifelong affinity for the natural world.
One childhood tale concerned the existence or not of a bird once synonymous with the dense hardwood forests and bottomlands of Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, and other southern states. Some people said it had gone extinct; others claimed to have seen it. All agreed it was a sight to behold.
Like nearly every one of you, as a child, I never saw the ivory-billed woodpecker though I did keep my eyes peeled in those Georgia woods. I was often fooled briefly by glimpses of its grand cousin, the pileated woodpecker, spooked into flight. But no ivory-bill. And like all of you today, I am delighted by the news that the "IBW," as we birders call it, is, in fact, alive. While many call the rediscovery a miracle, it is not luck that brought the ivory-bill back. The bird is alive in Arkansas today because local communities, government agencies, and private organizations worked together for decades to protect the bird's forest habitat. Its existence not only is a message of hope, but also a reminder that we all can and must be stewards of this Earth.
While global warming, habitat destruction, and species extinctions give us just cause for deep concern, I believe we have reason to be hopeful for our planet. In our nation alone, for the last 150 years, one of the most prevailing bipartisan commitments has been to the protection of the environment. Together, we have created and expanded national parks and wilderness areas, passed laws ensuring clean air and water, and afforded legal status to non-human life. On a global level, nations have signed important international agreements on reducing greenhouse gases and preserving biological diversity.
Still, there remains much to do everyday. We cannot continue to push nature to the brink and then hope that by miracle it will return. We must be vigilant, active defenders of our natural resources and prompt our leaders and fellow citizens to join us as such. We must follow our faiths and common sense, which I believe will guide us into the future on this better path.
This Earth Day, you can share your personal message of hope for the future of our planet, send a free Earth Day e-card to your friends and family, and volunteer for local Earth Day events and activities near you.
Learn more about The Nature Conservancy by joining our group on Gather.
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Comments: 6
I recently wrote a piece on this subject, showing how Carter's vision was destroyed by Reagan...and We the People did not even protest!
Here is the link.
Still, no former Prez stands taller than Jimmy. He's written the book on how to do it and do it right.
Jimmy Carter actually tried to do some of the things he said he would do if he were elected President. It was the American people who were not prepared to get what they asked for that was the reason Mr. Carter's Presidency was judged to be off-track, not the goals Jimmy Carter tried to achieve.
We Americans are pretty weak when it comes to paying attention to the things that are going on around us at the time they are happening. But, when we finally do pay attention, we tend to remember those who were trying to do the right thing "way back when".
Hopefully, Mr. Carter will get to see the appreciation for efforts he made some thirty years ago to address some of the problems we are facing today.
Thank you President Carter for having the guts to take a shot at doing what you said you would do when you were our President. I hope you find some consolation in knowing that your efforts are bearing fruit decades after you left the Presidency.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, " It ain't over till it's over. " your efforts might win the day after all.