Kanab’s 14th Amazing Earthfest 2020
to Address Climate Change
as Forest Fire Roars Through Gateway to the North Rim
By Rich Csenge, President and Founding Director, Amazing Earthfest
Beginning Saturday, July 18, 2020, southern Utah’s nonprofit Amazing Earthfest will produce its 14th annual public festival celebrating National and State Parks, Forests and Monuments of the American West. In an all-online program due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Earthfest events in 2020 will engage the public in looking closely at climate change.
Propelled by high winds and months of arid weather, the heartbreaking Magnum Fire has raged across more than 70,000 acres of the North Kaibab Plateau. The loss of Ponderosa Pine and Pinyon-Juniper forest, wildlife habitat, and the wild creatures of the sylvan ecosystem is inestimable. All-season recreation destinations are being devastated for generations to come. Across the globe, climate change is driving mega-fires like this.
Amazing Earthfest, based in Kanab, Utah, invites you to participate in viewing five free informative, award-winning documentary films, plus presentations and community conversations about the facts and the gravity of this evolving conundrum: The rapid rate of change in atmospheric CO2 coupled with persistent inaction to reduce carbon emissions. What can an individual do? For starters, keep in mind the 650 brave men and women risking their health and safety to contain this considerable wildfire on the beautiful North Kaibab Plateau.
The Magnum Fire compounds losses from the June 2006 Warm Fire, which fourteen years ago torched some 40,000 acres of Ponderosa and mixed Conifer on the North Kaibab. In the context and frequency of such immense fires, one must ask; is this an inescapable future we all must endure? Screenwriter Stephen Most will deliver the keynote address at the Earthfest opening event called Invocation to Sustainability. In one of the festival’s films, his acclaimed documentary, Wilder than Wild, produced by Kevin White, the two tell the gripping story of the California megafires of 2018/19.
These are not 500-year events anymore. For the second time in 14 years, the lovely North Kaibab National Forest, a gateway to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, is being inexorably altered by wildfire. Fire, excessive heat, and extended drought deplete soil moisture, surface flow, and groundwater reserves, presenting enormous risks to the quality of life across the American West. We are witnessing the devastating reality of a Climate Emergency.
Driven by unrelenting consumption of fossil fuels to power our civilization, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels this year breached 415 parts per million. In Siberia, 100-degree temperatures in June smashed all previous records and aroused massive concern. Compared with the many other social and economic problems now dominating the news, global warming remains the most significant issue of our time.
Public lands are sanctuaries for biodiversity and drive our outdoor recreation economy. It is abundantly clear that the health of America’s public lands and the world’s climate crisis are inextricably linked. Heat-trapping carbon dioxide and methane gas building up in the atmosphere are creating conditions not seen on Earth in three million years. E&E News, May 16, 2019.
For these reasons, the 14th Amazing Earthfest 2020 will emphasize educational events to broaden public understanding of the climate crisis.
The fossil record indicates that humanity did not exist three million years ago, nor did our cultures, cities, economic systems, livelihoods, and life-supporting infrastructure! Some argue “the climate is always changing.” In geologic time only, is their statement correct. Humanity’s ability to thrive depends on stable climatic conditions, and in the span of human existence and individual lifetimes, so that argument seems tragically misguided.
Since 1950, atmospheric CO2 has risen from near 300 ppm to 415 ppm (the span of a single lifetime). It’s the rate of change that threatens our survival and prosperity. That is why the world’s science community describes climate change as a crisis. https://climate.nasa.gov/
Learn more by attending the online events of the 14th Amazing Earthfest 2020. Become empowered to address the climate crisis in your community with your friends and loved ones, and make a difference now and for future generations yet unborn. Visit www.amazingearthfest.org for full event details.
I just finished reading the article ‘Kanab’s 14th Amazing Earthfest 2020 To Address Climate Change, and I got a good chuckle to see that only 6, 8 likes have been posted. Yes, these fires are devastating to land that I love and have many years of great memories discovering on our ATVs with my husband and four boys, along with all the Jeep and 4WD Truck enthusiasts who came before us and MADE ALL THE MANY TRAILS so very long before the bikers ever showed up. I remember the first small groups of bikers seemed very appreciative and respectful. But as their numbers grew, they grew angry, some were outright rude verbally and in gesture, and they resented our even being there! I will never forget opening my door to a young man who asked if I would sign a petition he had to ban all motorized vehicles, ATVs, 4Wheelers, Dirtbikes, etc., on off road trails down in Moab and other areas of Southeastern Utah because of the environmentally harmful impact they were doing?
SAY WHAT?! EXCUSE ME?! Needless to say what I told him before shutting the door harder than I needed to. There was no ban then but the animosity was certainly not worth exposing my sons to so we sold our six 4 Wheelers and we bought a 38’ Doral and 3 Kawasaki wave runners and spent our family recreation time at Lake Powell. I totally disagree with your blaming these horrific fires on ‘global warming’. For example;
Could one blame mass shootings on ‘global warming’, they are also happening at an alarming rate. Could one blame blame racism on ‘global warming’ which is now one of the biggest divisive issues in our country today and I dare say it threatens our country’s future so much so that it makes the current threat of global warming very insignificant! Just two of countless ‘things’ that affect us, our lives, our health, right now, that are happening. Now think of Hitler, his supremacy beliefs and actions to eliminate and erase an entire race of people, based on his belief that they were inferior and not worthy of life! History repeats itself and what we see today as radical racism, is a reflection of Hitler’s attitude toward Jews. I give this analogy to say that there have been tremendously devastating fires both past and present, and there will be in the future. They are not a cause of ‘global warming’. Your Amazing Earthfest to Address Climate Change because of these fires is a silly little campfire Kum Ba Ya. Please don’t get overly excited and accidentally
torch the forest!