Earth Day 50th Celebration in Ann Arbor

In Ann Arbor, the Earth Day celebrations for 2020 will take place even though many live events have been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Locally, the Ann Arbor Sustainability Office is taking the celebration online with the A2Zero 2020 Virtual Earth Day Celebration. Nationally, the Sunrise Movement and Youth Climate Strike are taking their events online with the Earth Day Live 2020, a 3-day live-stream.

Figure 1: Earth shot from nasa.govnasa.gov

 

History of Earth Day

I grew up in Western Pennsylvania in the 60’s and 70’s.  Water pollution was so bad the local news used to report on whether or not Lake Erie was on fire, again, because people kept dumping flammable oil and tires in the water. Near the steel mills in Pittsburgh, air pollution was so bad that, no matter how often people cleaned, everything was coated in a sticky black dust that got into your pores and lungs.

The first national Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970 and about 20 million people in the U.S. participated (more here).  It was held as an environmental teach-in because of the air and water pollution and unsafe working environments arising from unregulated industrial development.  Senator Nelson from Wisconsin had the idea for Earth Day and enlisted Representative Pete McCloskey and activist Denis Hayes to help plan the event.  According to the EarthDay.org website, 10% of Americans including both Democrats and Republicans, demonstrated in 1970 at the first Earth Day. A photograph from the New York Times of huge crowds in New York City  on Earth Day in 1970 is here.

What is the tie between the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Earth Day? According to heritage.umich.edu, U. of M. held the first environmental teach-in one month prior to the first Earth Day and 15,000 people attended the event.  The national Earth Day was modeled on the U. of M. event and Ann Arbor, where U. of M. is located, and Ann Arbor have therefore always had a strong connection with Earth Day.

What was the first impact of the first Earth Day?  It was huge and included the establishment of the Environmental Protection Act in 1970, and the passage of the Occupational Safety Health Act in 1970,  the Clean Air Act in 1970, and  the Clean Water Act in 1972, according to earthday.org.

A2Zero Virtual Earth Day Celebration

For the 2020 Virtual Earth Day Celebration, the Ann Arbor City Hall Sustainability Office is live-streaming the events for the day! You can click on this link to register for the virtual event.  Once you register, you can access the activities online any time.  Also, if you’re interested, you can go to this page

 to complete a pledge online for activities you will undertake for Earth Day. 

The schedule of events is available here and events take place from 9 AM-8 PM.  It will be kicked off by Mayor Christopher Taylor, who will give an address on sustainability in Ann Arbor and the history of Earth Day.

Another highlight is a youth panel on “What Gives You Hope On Earth Day,” led by U.M. student Kristen Hayden and including W.C.C. student Zaynab Elkolaly at 2:30 PM.

If you’re looking for educational events, you can learn about Ann Arbor-specific programs, carbon neutrality, rooftop solar, wind energy, integrated pest management and more. Finally, there’s entertainment, too, including a couple of sessions of music, sustainability trivia, Earth Day BINGO, the movie "The Story of Plastic" and the reading of a children’s story, Mama Miti.

Get the Youth Out (-of-Doors, That Is)

The Ann Arbor A2Zero site also lists 10 kid-friendly Earth Day activities suitable for kids that will keep them engaged but safe during the pandemic. (Go here and scroll to the bottom of the page.)

Activities include: going on a nature scavenger hunt, building a “seed blaster” (you’ll have to read the description to find out what it is!), using a toilet paper tube to make a colorful wind sock, starting a meditation journal, and “Nature Lesson” videos from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. A number of these ideas are especially good at getting the kids out of the house, so they can have fun, education, and exercise on Earth Day!

Figure 2. The Great Lakes from nasa.gov

Earth Day Live, April 22-24 Live-stream

The Earth Day Live 2020 events are put on by the Youth Climate Strike and Sunrise movements. These events are youth-led and represent a growing concern about climate change and the environment, especially among our youth and teens.

The schedule of events for the 3-day live-stream is here, (scroll to find the events) The events include speeches, presentations, live music, meditations and calls to action.  The first day, April 22, will “focus on amplifying the voice of indigenous leaders and youth climate activists who are leading the movement to halt the climate crisis,” according to the website.

Additionally, there are 24 hours of action you can engage with, which you can find here.  Activities include sharing your air quality with a photo, cleaning up litter (solo), making a plant-based meal, contacting your representative and many more.

There Is No Planet B

Earth Day celebrations and events are taking place starting tomorrow, April 22 – April 24, 2020, because the Earth has limited resources for human needs, and, as the T-shirts say, there is no Planet B. Won’t you join in the celebration of the Earth, starting tomorrow and the work that must be done to sustain it, starting today?

This blogpost was written for the benefit of students at Washtenaw Community College and the community as part of my sabbatical activities for winter 2020.  I am solely responsible for the content and hold the copyright for the work. Feel free to use the information in this blog; just credit me with a link back to my blog! -Emily Thompson, Ph.D.

Coronavirus: the Unequal Opportunity Virus

COVID-19, or the corona virus, is the name of the disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. The virus initials stand for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; more on nomenclature here.  SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus, which means RNA is on the inside of a membrane sphere spiked with (red) proteins, as shown in Figure 1. The sphere is made up of membrane from the previous host, meaning the person who sneezed on someone else and gave them the virus.  Yup, that’s right.  The virus went into the host, multiplied and broke out again covered in the membrane of the host.  Gross, efficient and, in the case of COVID-19, deadly.

Figure 1. SARS-CoV-2 virus particles (from cdc.gov)

I’ve been following issues in public health in southeast Michigan, and COVID 19 infections and deaths in this region show troubling trends. The rate of deaths in Michigan are among the higher rates posted world-wide. On April 1, the Michigan.gov/coronavirus website published data from which I calculated a crude death rate of 3.6% for April 1 and a death rate of  6.1% for April 12 (Table 1; data from michigan.gov/coronavirus).  The world death rate, according the the World Health Organization and reported in Nature was 3.4% on April 3  (read it here).

Table 1. Calculated crude death rates due to coronavirus in Michigan

This is mirrored by significantly higher infection rates and higher death rates in certain counties in Southeast Michigan.  These counties include Oakland and Macomb counties to the north and and Wayne county immediately south, with the city in Detroit located in Wayne county.  In Figure 2, the number of cases per county is shown and you can see a concentration of cases in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties (michigan.gov/coronavirus.)

Figure 2 Total cases by county in Oakland (Ok), Macomb(Mb)

Washtenaw (Ww) and Wayne (Wy) counties, modified

from Michigan.gov/coronavirus, accessed April 12)

In Table 2, I've calculated the death rates for Detroit and four neighboring counties (data from Detroit is given separately; data from michigan.gov/coronavirus).   It is shocking to see that the death rates are higher in Detroit, Wayne, Macomb and Oakland than in Washtenaw on April 1 and they are much higher by April 12 (Table 2).

Table 2: Calculated crude death rates due to coronavirus in 4 counties and the City of Detroit

What could cause these much higher death rates in Detroit and Wayne, Macomb and Oakland counties?

A recent report by Thebault, Ba Tran and Williams (2020) from the Washington Post states that counties with Black majorities have higher rates of infection and death than counties that have white majorities.  In Michigan, according to their analysis, 33% of cases are African Americans and almost 40% of deaths are African Americans, although African Americans make up only 14% of the state’s population (read it here). 

What could cause  higher death rates among Blacks/African Americans?  Brookings Institute scholar, Rashawn Ray, states in a Brookings Institute blog (2020) that pre-existing health conditions and health disparity are the main contributors to the higher death rate among blacks and African Americans (2020).  Disparities, he explains, start with redlining minorities into subpar neighborhoods where they have less access to good food and green spaces for exercise, and where they are farther from hospitals and have lower-quality pharmacies. Every health threat leads to more illness and death in these neighborhoods than others (read the article here).

Rashawn Ray goes on to say that occupation is another factor in higher death rates among blacks and African Americans. Blacks and African Americans in areas with higher death rates are more likely to be considered essential during the pandemic and to work at jobs with a high degree of public contact.  Blacks, he said, make up a significant part of the workforce in occupations like food service worker, bus driver, and cashier.  Their dedication to serve others can have deadly consequences (read the article here).

I learned in an article in Metrotimes (Neavling, 2019) that an additional factor leading to high death rates in Detroit is lack of water to wash hands.  One of the CDC recommendations to prevent transmission of the virus is to wash hands with soap and water. However,  between April and August of 2019, the water was turned off in almost 12,000 homes in Detroit due to lack of payment. According  a report in Mlive (Moore, 2020), on March 28, Governer  Whitmer signed an executive order mandating that all water  get turned back on so everyone in Detroit is able to clean their hands to help prevent spread of the virus in their homes.  

Figure 3. PM2.5 emissions in Michigan in 2014
(Michigan Annual Air Quality Report from 2019)

Finally, there is one more possibility for why Blacks have a higher infection rate and death rate in an unpublished report from Harvard University’s Chan School of Public Health, as reported in the New York Times (Friedman, 2020).  They state there is a correlation between death from coronavirus and PM2.5 air pollution (Particulate Matter 2.5 micron).  And, the air in SE Michigan has some issues!  The 2018 annual air quality report for Michigan states, “Particulate trends show that particulate concentrations have decreased, and the state is in compliance for all particulate NAAQS; however, Michigan has had past nonattainment issues in Southeast Michigan for TSP, PM10 and PM2.5. (p. 38; read it here ) The data on PM2.5 pollution in Michigan can be found in Figure 3 and the data on number of cases is in Figure 2.  If you compare the two maps, you can see the geographic correlation between where the highest PM2.5 air pollution is and where the highest number of cases are,.  Furthermore, we'd expect more deaths where there are more cases.

The news about higher rates of infection and higher death rates in Blacks/African Americans in Michigan spurred Governor Whitmer on April 9 to create the Michigan Coronavirus Task Force on Racial Disparities to study the problem in Michigan (read the announcement on michigan.gov here).

Interestingly, there is a report by Healy in the LA Times (2020) that there is another group that seems to have a higher death rate.  The report is that males might be both more susceptible to infection and more likely to die than females. This trend is under current study and you can read about it here.  

We desperately need to fix inequalities in the structure of our society, especially in Southeast Michigan.  Everyone needs have access to clean water and air, good food, excellent health care, high-quality education, environmentally-friendly transportation, and a good standard of living. I’m not sure how to fix these disparities, but we must stop institutionalized racism, sexism, ageism, and other isms that separate us, preventing us from living and working together and, importantly these days, fighting coronavirus together.

This blogpost was written for the benefit of the learning community at Washtenaw Community College and beyond as part of my sabbatical activities for Winter 2020.  I am solely responsible for the content and hold the copyright for the work. Feel free to use the information in this blog; just credit me with a link back to my blog! -Emily Thompson, Ph.D.