EARTH DAY -- what are ways to preserve our planet?

Save
our
Mother
Earth -- conserve 
our resources, shift 
to non-polluting substances.

As many of you readers know, the poem above is an example of  a FIB -- a six-line poem with syllable-counts matching the first six Fibonacci numbers,  When I sit down to write about a particular topic, I often find the the FIB format is a good way to start -- developing an idea starting with single words and gradually developing longer phrases.   And, today, outside of this blog, I am trying to learn more about earth friendly substances.

If you have time to be interested in more mathy and earth-friendly poems, this link leads to the results of a blog search for climate change and this second link leads to previous Earth Day blog postings.

 This link leads to postings -- and poems -- in this blog related to CLIMATE.

And here is a link to several previous EARTH DAY postings..

April 22 -- Observe Earth Day

     Along with the vicious Russian attacks in Ukraine, our world today is observing a much longer period of destruction to our planet.  This link leads to "EARTH DAY" poetry in earlier postings in this blog.  And here at this website are some Earth Day poems for students.

Choose with care--
Don't pollute.  
Don't waste. Earth's

resources
are waning.
Please! Help save!

 For a bit of amusement, 25 Earth Day puns are found here.

Earth Day -- are we the FINAL ones?

Tomorrow (April 22) is Earth Day.  This worried poem is structured using
The Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic.
(Some explanatory notes follow the poem.)

"We Are the Final Ones"  by JoAnne Growney

Poems in support of Earth Day

     These words come from an editorial by Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post in September of 2018.

          Public awareness
          and pressure are
          the best hope
          for effective
          climate
          action.

This link leads to postings -- and poems -- in this blog related to CLIMATE.
And here is a link to several previous EARTH DAY postings..

A  fine source for lots more climate information is the Center for Mathematics and the Environment at the University of Exeter.   Another is 350.org -- which offers 350 poems of 3.5 lines each at this link; these poems came as part of a call for climate action for October 24, 2009.  Alas, it is ten years later and we have not answered the call.

Earth Day -- April 22, 2015

Consider today the thoughtful words of this sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950):

     Read history: so learn your place in Time
     And go to sleep: all this was done before;
     We do it better, fouling every shore;
     We disinfect, we do not probe, the crime.
     Our engines plunge into the seas, they climb
     Above our atmosphere: we grow not more
     Profound as we approach the ocean's floor;
     Our flight is lofty, it is not sublime.
     Yet long ago this Earth by struggling men
     Was scuffed, was scraped by mouths that bubbled mud;
     And will be so again, and yet again;
     Until we trace our poison to its bud
     And root, and there uproot it: until then,
     Earth will be warmed each winter by man's blood.

These lines are found on my shelf in Collected Sonnets (Revised and Expanded Edition) by Edna St. Vincent Millay (Harper & Row, 1988).  AND, recall the arithmetic of a sonnet:  14 lines (or breaths) and 5 iambs (or heartbeats) per line. 

Earth Day, 2013

     OUR earth is finite. 
     Its resources are
     finite. No clever
     transformation can

     convert the
     finite to
     infinite.

     We must
     learn to

     share.  

And, here is a link to a previous Earth Day posting.

Earth Day, 2011

      My father, a farmer, was respectful of our earth's resources.  Replenish what you take, he taught.   But some of us consume without replacement as if the earth is infinite in its capacities. 
     When growth is exponential, we may not see its consequences before it is too late.  (Have we already destroyed the balances of nature?)  The following 8 x 8 syllable-square poem restates a oft-used math-textbook question -- and reminds us that little time may be left to solve environmental problems.   

A Square for Earth Day

Greetings on EARTH DAY.  Earth's inhabitants today pay a price not only for our own careless habits but also for earlier ignorance about the fragility of our world. (As Garrett Hardin has said, "There is no away to throw to.")  The April 20 edition of  the Washington Post had an AP article about the risks of trash to wildlife in the Atlantic that provoked me to write the following square poem.