50 results for author: Dan Barth


Earth Day 2022

Sponsored by the local Citizen’s Climate Lobby Chapter and NAOMI of Wausau celebrated Earth Day by planting fifteen trees  on April 23rd at Memorial Park. In the spirit of Wausau’s Community for All Resolution those trees were planted by our sisters and brothers from our Indigenous, Hmong, African American, and Hispanic communities as well as Muslim, Jewish and Christian members of our Family. We were excited to have tree planting teams from the LGBTQ community and various local organizations like the YWCA, MOSAIC, Citizens for a Clean Wausau, Citizens Action and more. This is the sixth year in a row we have celebrated Earth Day with ...

Earth Day 2022 in Wausau: Honoring Life, Building a Beloved Community for All

The significance of an annual Earth Day celebration stands out like a beacon of hope and determination in our increasingly troubled environment. PFAS in our water, benzene in our deodorants, sunscreens and other commonly used products, particles of plastic now showing up in the blood coursing through our bodies and in our lungs, pesticides, and climate change; the evidence that decades of environmental carelessness threaten life on this planet of ours is all around us. Rather than throw our hands up in despair we choose to honor this unique, living planet upon whose health the rich diversity of life depends, and to dedicate our efforts to ...

Our Shaky Tower of Environmental Sustainability

With one eye focused on the tragedy in Ukraine and the other on the rising price at the gas pump, we run the risk of missing an even greater crisis quietly bearing down on us. The stability of our lives depends on a bewildering multitude of interdependent elements, something like a complex Jenga Tower. Keep all the blocks in place and the tower stands solid enough to plan our futures upon. Start pulling out the supporting blocks and things get wobbly. Pull out enough blocks and everything collapses. Of course, I am talking about the environmental sustainability of life on our little planet - taking good care of mother earth, what we often call the web ...

The evolutionary path to sustainability

Things evolve. From microscopic bacteria and viruses like COVID to the dinosaurs now fluttering at our bird feeders for some sunflower seeds, we are all products of hundreds of millions of years of genetic adaptation and change.

Wausau going big on solar energy should excite those who love nature

As a homeowner myself, there was something in their desire to preserve “hearth and home” that at first struck an empathetic chord.

Let’s price carbon now and let’s do it equitably

When I first started gardening in 1974, frost took the cold sensitive plants down the very first weekend in September.

Lessons of a butterfly

Whoever watches the magic show of the chrysalis gains the gift of hope.

Earth Day dreams

On a cool, cloudy Saturday, April 24th, the Citizen's Climate Lobby of Marathon County and North central Area congregations Organized to Make an Impact (NAOMI) of Wausau were able to gather a gloriously diverse family of good folks who showed up to plant trees for Earth Day in one of our local parks.

Earth Day has its roots in Wisconsin

Wisconsin and Earth Day go back a long way together. Truth be told, without Wisconsin, Earth Day might not even exist. Dismayed by a disastrous oil spill off the coast of California in 1969, our own Senator Gaylord Nelson conceived and set in motion the gears that made Earth Day 1970 a phenomenon to be reckoned with.

A call for equity and sustainable systems

Equity, the fairness with with which we treat one another, has finally become a hot topic. Sustainability, the pursuit of an environment healthy enough to ensure a livable planet for ourselves and for our children has, thankfully, become another. Together they pack a pretty explosive punch! Ignore them and we may find ourselves flat on our backs; the soul of our humanity bruised and battered by tooth and claw competition on a shriveling planet. Around the world, including here in Wisconsin, small family farmers are being forced off their land by grocery store-scale industrial agriculture. In the last fifteen years nearly half of Wisconsin's family ...