We had much to celebrate at “Earth Day at 40.” But, of course, we had much to concern us as well. The good news is that whenever we touched on “global weirding,” water rights, or any number of other environmental issues, someone at the conference offered ideas or solutions. These ranged from the most massive — a new electric grid across the United States — to the smallest and most local — digging up your lawn and planting raised beds with vegetables.

And there was even better news — we all left the conference fired up to make a difference! I’m just sorry we didn’t use that new-found energy to walk the few blocks to the capitol and demonstrate for the “Clean Energy Jobs” bill, which the Wiscsonsin legislature didn’t pass the next day!!!!

Author Margaret Atwood, Activist Robert Kennedy, Jr., Wilderness Society President William Meadows, UW-Madison History Professor William Cronon, and Gaylord Nelson’s daughter Tia Nelson, who is the executive secretary of the Wisconsin Board of Commisioners of Public Lands, all spoke, giving rousing speeches and words of warning (or were those words of “warming,” as I originally typed?). Almost all of these talks will be online at the Nelson Institute website in the next few weeks. I’ll let you know when. But until then, here are some highlights.

Margaret Atwood performed an amazing feat; she had us rolling in the aisles about all our worries concerning environmental problems like “global warming.” The author of Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood added that Franz Kafka used to laugh his head off while reading his own work out loud, so maybe it comes with the territory. Her final plea was for eco-mercy, as opposed to eco-justice. I took this as an opportunity to tell people about the Network for Spiritual Progressives and its Global Marshall Plan, since it is the closest thing to eco-mercy that I’ve found.

Bobbie Kennedy made repeatedly clear how pollution is theft and favoritism. His major example was coal. First of all, there are the subsidies, which make it more difficult for alternative technologies to compete in the marketplace. Then there are the hidden subsidies, like the 22 inches of asphalt that paves coal country, because the company trucks are so heavy that a normal five to six inches would just break down.

And then there’s the outright theft from every American. The air that we breathe and the water that we drink are a part of the “commons” that belongs to all of us. It’s robbery when they’re polluted. Using coal as his example, Kennedy reported that its resulting pollution includes one fifth of all Adirondack lakes, which are now sterile because of acid rain; Appalchia’s mountains, which are literally being leveled by strip-mining;every fresh water fish in this country, since all have dangerous levels of mercury; and mercury pollution doesn’t stop there — many women’s wombs are so contaminated that their children will be brain-damaged. I had already decided to give time and energy to the “Beyond Coal” movement, but this had me jumping up to call the Sierra Club. And now I have an appointment to speak with someone there next Monday.

In addition to this powerful list of speakers, there were too many concurrent sessions to choose from, all with amazing presenters and on topics of great interest. I attended the workshop on “Innovative Approaches to Biodiversity Conservation,” mainly because my sister Amy Vedder was a presenter.

Both the major panelists reported on solutions that have worked to conserve animals and landscapes. Rich Beilfuss, Interim President of the International Crane Foundation, talked about rethinking the impact of water resources on biodiversity, using the Zambezi basin in Africa –where he’s been helping to restore the environment — as his example. Not only did he tell us that water rights may be the next big environmental issue (something we already knew), but he demonstrated how returning water to its natural flow always produces economic as well as environmental benefits.

This is good to know, because there are at least three negative trends that seem to be reappearing when it comes to water: 1) Construction of new dams — as opposed to their removal in the 1990s, 2) water diversion, and 3) pressure on wetlands. What Rich explained was that doing the right thing for biodiversity ends up being the right thing for human well-being, too. In the case of the Zambezi, that means that the loss of ecosystem services downstream from the dam — things like food and water, plus regulation of river flows and cultural benefits — is always greater than the gains upstream.

Dr. Amy Vedder, senior vice president of the Wilderness Society, offered three examples of successful biodiversity projects from her experience. The most dramatic was setting up the Mountain Gorilla Project in Rwanda in the late 1970s. What she and her husband Bill Weber discovered was that the Rwandan people had no connection with the gorillas in their land, to the point that they asked why these two Americans weren’t studying American gorillas. The Mountain Gorilla Project, described in Amy and Bill’s book In the Kingdom of Gorillas, established a win-win situation for the people and the animals in Rwanda, giving jobs to Rwandans who lived near the Virungas National Park, bringing hard currency into this 3rd poorest country in the world, and giving the people pride in the gorillas that lived only in their country and nearby. It was perhaps the first ecotourism project in the world.

Bill Meadows, the president of the Wilderness Society, gave us some good news as well. Despite the environmental problems we face with “global weirding” at the top of the list with all its attendant troubles — glaciers melting, decreases in the snow pack that are causing rivers to flood, the increase in wild fires, the changes in migration patterns, habitat disappearance, and the possibility that our trees are beginning to die — Meadows told us that fortunately we finally have an administration in Washington that is on the same page as environmentalists. Obama has fielded a “green team” headed by Ken Salazar, the Secretary of the Interior. This team will spearhead a new initiative called “America’s Great Outdoors” to encourage outdoor recreation by Americans; connect wildlife migration corridors; and encourage the sustainable use of private land.

Meadows also advocated cap-and-trade legislation. He told an already well-informed audience that we have to stop using carbon and oil (I think we need to start naming the fossil fuels, instead of using this euphemism that hides from us when we’re using them). Without the cap-and-trade bill — which is not as good as any of us would like — we won’t have the wherewithal to invest in clean energy. There’s good news here as well. After the Tokyo agreement, only four of the 44 signatory nations took enough action to decrease their greenhouse gas emissions — Denmark, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. During the years when these countries made the transition, they had the storngest economic growth of all 44 nations.

So it’s time to get going on these issues. It’s a win-win situation for the economy and the environment. Not to mention that it’s essential to our survival as a species. As a poster outside the capitol on Earth Day read: “There is no planet B!”