WHO KNEW The Need for Earth Day is More Urgent Than Ever?
WHO KNEW The Need for Earth Day is More Urgent Than Ever?
In the late 1960s, evidence of human caused damage to the environment was overwhelming: rivers on fire due to years of industrial waste dumping, massive oil spills, acid rain caused by smog in the atmosphere, lakes and streams polluted and dying. Bi-partisan congressional willpower, coupled with a growing grassroots awareness, enabled the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, the Clean Air Act in 1970, the Clean Water Act in 1972 and the Endangered Species Act in 1973; all under the aegis of a Republican President. The first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, was a watershed moment for all of this legislation.
In the early decades after the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, huge effort went into cleaning up waterways and improving air quality. It’s hard to imagine, now, how bad it was. As a child growing up in Hanover, I was warned not to swim in the Connecticut River. The impact of acid rain was evident on trees and cars. Here in the Upper Valley, we are all beneficiaries of the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.
More than 50 years after the first Earth Day, our air, water and environment still need our protection. Rising temperatures due to the burning of fossil fuels, sea level rise, ocean acidification, habitat loss due to over-development, wildfires, extreme weather, microplastics, extinctions, invasive plants and insects—all of these threaten us and the earth we live on. The evidence, again, is overwhelming.
In 1970, Americans came together and made a difference. In 1987, the international community came together and created the Montreal Protocol, touted by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan as “perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date”. The Montreal Protocol treaty, ratified by 197 states and the European Union, is designed to phase out the production of substances responsible for ozone depletion. It has been revised and amended many times, most recently in 2018, and it is working—the Antarctic ozone hole is shrinking.
Is the earth a resource to be used, or an ecosystem to be preserved? For the sake of our survival and every other living thing, it better be both. History has shown that, when the threat is dire, we can make a difference by putting aside our differences. Tomorrow, April 22, is Earth Day—a day to take stock of how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go, together.