Louis Armstrong was an Environmentalist

Listening to the words of Louis Armstrong, Satchmo, the famous 20th century singer and jazz trumpeter singing “What a Wonderful World” and it becomes clear. He didn’t write the words or music but his emotion floats along with the notes and you know what he is feeling. “I see skies of blue and clouds of white, the bright blessed day and the dark sacred night, and I think to myself what a wonderful world.”

The song is a hymn to the everyday beauty of the world we live in that often goes unnoticed. Listening to its words can be a calming antidote to the chaos and confusion we feel from national and global political instability and increasingly more chaotic and catastrophic events in our environment.

As environmentalists, we can help bring calm a bit of peace to our friends and neighbors by helping them put the beauty of nature into the foreground of their lives. We can do this by considering art and beauty as environmental values. 

As a start, we suggest making your own home or apartment a place of beauty and thrifty, low impact living. Select some house plants or get a cutting or two from friends and start your own mini-solarium. House plants clean your air of carbon dioxide, add to the balance of humidity in your home, and bring you closer to a natural environment that we humans evolved in.

And as you evolve your home décor, consider family hand me downs or possibly second-hand items you carefully select from yard sales or vintage shopping to create your own personal cachet. In up-cycling old furniture via repair, cleaning, and polishing it, you will be hand selecting each item and the continuity of your choices will make your place both stylish and environmentally friendly.

For environmentalists, thrifty, low impact living is beautiful living. It can become a hobby and a chance to spend quality time with friends and family. Summer Sunday mornings strolling with a companion through Todd Farm Flea market in Rowley can be a complete eco-conscious pleasure. Maybe you find yourself looking for vintage kitchen ware, cloth napkins and table cloths. That fine china flower vase, maybe a bit nicked, filled with flowers, can make you or an ailing friend smile. The Japanese have a phrase for it, Wabi Sabi: Wabi - the beauty of simplicity, rustic solitude, and nature; and Sabi - the beauty that comes with age, wear, and the passage of time.

Those small imperfections in objects that give the item personality and a history. Originally it was things like the potter’s own thumb print left on purpose. But the old vase with a nick from the past, filled with wildflowers for your afternoon al fresco lunch, will bring its own unique beauty will be both of environmental value -reuse- and happiness value - a beautiful object you rescued.

It is a wonderful world and bringing more tiny moments of beauty and joy into every day actives can transform the kid’s peanut butter and jelly lunch into a fun occasion. Let beauty be imperfect, a slightly crooked vase, a weathered table, wrinkles around someone's eyes, tomatoes from the garden. Beauty isn't the same as perfection. Beauty is our glimpse of nature’s core, life’s core.

So, ACES suggests we care for our future selves and those of our families and friends. Sleep enough, be thrifty, and maintain our belongings. Let’s conserve more than we consume. Cook, arrange flowers, write, garden, photograph, draw, make things with our hands. Much of a beautiful life is simply noticing the place where we are living, the planet we call earth in a vast and largely unknown universe. The place that Louis Armstrong sang his environmentalist song about. What a Wonderful World.

We invite you to stay updated on environmental matters by subscribing to our monthly newsletter on ACES’ website. Please consider joining our community of stewards committed to Make Every Day Earth Day and subscribe to our Instagram and Facebook.

This educational column was originally published by The Daily News of Newburyport on September 5, 2026.