On March 26, American civil rights leader, environmentalist and Executive Director of the Sierra Club, Ben Jealous visited Ashland University to speak to students and guests in the Upper Convocation Center.  

The event, “Winning for the Planet,” began at 7p.m., and was held by the Ashland Center for Nonviolence, along with co-sponsors, the Honors Program, Robert and Janet Archer and the Environmental Science Program.  

Jealous is the executive director and long-time member of the Sierra Club.  

The Sierra Club is an American environmental organization with chapters in all 50 U.S. states, as well as Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico.  

The organization has been in place for over 130 years, fighting for our planet.  

According to their website, The Sierra Club has helped to retire 382 coal plants, protect 439 parks and monuments and protect over 10 million acres of wilderness in the United States.  

“I was born into the NAACP; I was born into the Sierra Club. The chapter I grew up in is the one that Ansel Adams, the great American photographer founded,” said Jealous. 

At the event, Jealous related the state of our environment to many different topics and viewpoints.  

“I turned 21 the year that NAFTA went into effect; I’ve spent my entire adult life watching 65,000 American factories shut down.” 

“It didn’t matter if you were up in Maine, it was the textile mills. If you were in Baltimore, it was the steel mills; and what replaced it? It didn’t matter the color of the community, it got replaced by the same things: joblessness, hopelessness, poverty, despair,” said Jealous.  

Throughout his speech, Jealous mentioned bits of his family history, and the America he grew up in.  

No matter the political, racial, ethnic or economic background, he believes that everyone should fight for this planet that we share. 

“What growing up with this, and my family in this country taught me that is that we are just one American family and that if we are going to get things right, ain’t no calvary coming but us,” said Jealous.  

Jealous spoke about the extinction crisis and how the main drive behind it is habitat loss. In his own style, he was able to substantiate habitat loss and show the audience how real and dire the issue is.  

He mentioned his hometown, Pacific Grove, CA. Also known as “Butterfly Town U.S.A., as it is a popular overwintering site for the Western Monarch Butterfly.  

“When I was a kid, the boughs of the trees on the grove that our town was named for, would lean with the weight of more than 10,000 butterflies.”  

“Last year when the butterflies returned, it wasn’t 10,000, it wasn’t 1,000, it was 238 monarchs,” said Jealous.  

While some may not find the climate crisis to be a concern, Jealous works every day to help people see what he sees.  

“People can debate, and want to be fancy about climate crisis, guessing it involves algebra and calculus, somehow finding it magical; the extinction crisis, it’s just subtraction.” 

The largest solar panel production facility in the Western world is in Dalton, GA.  

Jealous explained that when walking through the massive facility, many might miss the 20 some canvases that line the walls.  

These were artworks from the factory’s annual Earth Day art competition and were made by the factory workers’ children.  

“They drew their parents as heroes saving the world,” said Jealous.  

“They drew their mom with her black hair, straight, arm in arm with the globe. They drew their dad as superman, holding up the planet.” 

Before passing the mic to the audience, Jealous drew everyone in with one closing statement.  

“We shifted from burning up the things that God gave us finite amounts of, polluting the lungs of our children and our elders, driving up asthma rates, heart attack rates; why don’t we just get on past all of that?” said Jealous. 

“Seize the future instead.”