Maui Earth Day Falls Short

The scary and transformative COVID-19 virus has produced record unemployment, widespread isolation, hunger, illness and death. Like potentially more harmful pandemics of the future, its origin is zoonotic, initially transmitted from animals to humans.

The destructive impact of animal agriculture on climate change is well-documented, but the novel coronavirus has created even more urgency for ending live animal wet markets and factory farms.

Professor Kate Jones, chair of ecology and biodiversity at University College London, calls emerging animal-borne infectious diseases an “increasing and very significant threat to global health, security and economies.”

If you thought that combatting climate change and preventing future pandemics by reducing or eliminating corporate animal agriculture would come across loud and clear during the 2020 Virtual Maui Earth Day, you would be wrong. For people who truly care about our planet, veganism should be a no-brainer.  At Maui Earth Day 2020, it was barely a footnote.

From noon until late in the evening, online talks explored backyard gardens, planting trees, food security, overcoming fear, eco homes, 5G and electromagnetic fields, over-development, overpopulation, the desecration of ancestral bones, culture, sovereignty, democracy, empowerment, GMOs, green burials, invasive plant species, water diversion and pollution and a welcome Supreme Court ruling about injection wells.

Four speakers emphasized the importance of the spirit of aloha, but none suggested extending it to pigs, goats, cows and chickens by sparing them from abuse and slaughter. Similarly, another non-holistic concept, environmental justice, also seems to exclude the animals with whom we share the planet. Is the Sierra Club unfamiliar with the compassionate outlook of naturalist and writer Henry Beston?

Representatives of organizations like Maui Food Not Bombs and Maui Green Riders shared some vegan-friendly initiatives.  The Common Ground Collective’s Jennifer Karaca offered a refreshingly non-academic and practical framework for increasing food security through decentralized agriculture, a concept advocated by several other speakers, as well.

If Maui Earth Day 2020 offers a reasonably accurate reflection of Maui’s current environmental “movement,” it’s a fragmented grab bag of eclectic initiatives pursued by earnest but siloed individuals. To be sure, important victories have been secured, and thoughtful insights were expressed. What’s missing is the prioritization and coordination needed to successfully confront the most urgent planet-threatening challenges ahead.

For the most part, Maui Earth Day 2020 was strangely out-of-touch, an invitation to proceed with environmental business as usual. That’s not good enough.