Earth Day Turns 50

By FRANK LINGO

In April 1970, Earth Day was held to raise awareness about the way we treat our planet. It was the idea of Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.) and it was embraced by millions of people in city parks and college campuses nationwide.

Earth Day moved us to treat our environment better. Two disasters of that time made it a no-brainer that we had to change. Chemical waste on the Cuyahoga River in Ohio caught fire, and images of a river burning on the evening news shocked the country. Then there was a massive oil spill from offshore drilling near Santa Barbara, Calif., killing many thousands of fish, birds and sea mammals along a 35-mile stretch of beaches.

Politicians responded in a positive and bi-partisan way. Congress passed the Clean Air Act, the Water Quality Improvement Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Toxic Substances Control Act, among others. They were fine pieces of legislation. The Environmental Protection Agency was created and charged with the care of our air, land and water. President Nixon signed them all into law.

These laws worked. Catalytic converters on cars greatly reduced carbon monoxide emissions and made urban air breathable again. Financial assistance was provided for wastewater treatment, and for maintaining the integrity of wetlands for natural filtration and flood control. Survival of plant and animal species had to be accommodated, in contrast to our previously unfettered cut-it-down and pave-it-over ways.

That was then.

Since the burst of environmental progress in the 1970s, the United States has mostly been backsliding. Earth Day has become an event for kids and hippies.

One small example of regression: President Carter put solar panels on the White House. President Reagan took them off.

Reagan slashed the budget for research into solar power, a technology that American scientists had pioneered. Also, Reagan put the foxes in charge of the hen house. Fossil fuel executives and their minions, who hated regulation of any kind, became heads of departments in charge of enforcing environmental regulations.

George Bush I pulled the US out of the Kyoto Protocols, a multi-nation effort to reduce global warming. To be fair, Bush I helped achieve a 1990 update of the Clean Air Act which reduced sulfur dioxide, the cause of acid rain.

Bill Clinton chose environmental author Senator Al Gore for VP, but they never made the United States a leader in renewable energy, and Clinton didn’t get the US to join the global treaties. The US Senate was mostly to blame but Clinton’s efforts were anemic. At least Clinton did preserve some national monuments in the West, but his EPA enforcement was disappointing.

With George Bush II we went from disappointment to disaster. Sierra Club’s former Executive Director Carl Pope said Bush II has “the worst environmental record in American history. The administration consistently favors polluting industries over health and safety.”

President Obama tried to do right but was handcuffed for three-fourths of his time by uncooperative Republicans in control of Congress. At least Obama got $80 billion allocated for renewable energy. He also made strides with China, the new leader in air pollution, to cut greenhouse gases.

President Trump immediately nullified that agreement with China.

Trump is even worse than Bush II. Besides stocking the swamp with alligators, he has the attitude of the rich to treat the planet as they treat the poor — like toilet paper.

According to a New York Times article in December 2019, Trump has trashed over 90 environmental regulations. These include gutting air and water pollution laws, allowing drilling in fragile ecosystems, and abandoning protections of endangered species. A few of these rollbacks have been successfully challenged in the courts but it’s unrealistic to expect Trump’s EPA to enforce the laws.

Unfortunately, this anti-environmentalism has become the hallmark of the Republican Party nationwide. Right-wing groups have used SLAPP suits against activists, particularly animal welfare advocates. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. These suits weaponize the courts to intimidate, censor and silence critics with legal costs until they give up their opposition.

Why did the party of Teddy Roosevelt, who instituted our National Parks, become anti-environmental? Money. The oil, coal and chemical companies made huge contributions to Republican politicians (and some to Democrats as well) to buy them off and it worked. Republican politicians uniformly oppose curtailing climate chaos.

In other democracies, both conservative and liberal politicians understand the need for action on climate. But US conservatives are irrationally anti-science.

That’s what money in politics does.

Since about 99% of the world’s climate scientists see global warming as a man-made crisis that is already happening, Republican politicians have to deny the science while citing views of a few scientists employed by big oil.

Petroleum’s persistent propaganda has fostered doubt and denial among the public, especially Republican voters.

Yet Exxon knew from research by its own scientists in the 1970s that oil consumption causes global warming. It’s like the tobacco companies, which knew and lied about cigarettes causing cancer.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court has forced Exxon to reveal its documents.

In the 20th century, America had the shameful distinction of leading the world in polluting. We were briefly the leader in cleaning it up, but that was lost 40 years ago. Now we’re the leader in obstructing the movement to reverse climate chaos.

There has been a dramatic uptick in hurricanes, droughts, floods and wildfires. We humans have operated under the illusion that we have dominion over the Earth.

We cause these catastrophes but can we stop them? The devastating fires in California and Australia are a preview of what is to come.

The world’s bees have died in record numbers and they are essential for pollinating many of our favorite foods. Butterflies have also suffered tremendous losses, with Monarch populations down about 95% from 1990s numbers, according to some estimates.

Some fluctuations in species happen naturally, but according to a 2014 report in Science, the loss of plant and animal species is occurring about 1,000 times the rate than if humans weren’t in the picture.

For people who try to prevent such plundering, there is great peril.

Global Witness, a London-based watch group, reported 164 killings of environmental activists worldwide in 2018 and 201 killings in 2017.

A March 2019 International Energy Agency report shows worldwide demand for oil, coal and natural gas hit all-time highs in 2018. The biggest increases for oil and natural gas came from the US. The IEA cites another report showing it costs less to develop wind and solar power than to maintain almost three-fourths of US coal plants. Building renewable energy facilities creates jobs so it’s a win-win, if only politicians would do it.

Author Herman Daly said something worth remembering: “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the ecology.²

Americans need to wake up. A September 2019 Washington Post article cites a survey showing that over 6 in 10 Americans believe that no major sacrifice will be required of them to combat the climate crisis. A spark of hope is that the younger generation sees the need to reverse climate chaos. Now if only they’d get off their phones long enough to vote.

It¹s up to us. Things each of us can do include: Vote for candidates who will protect the environment; vote with your dollars for home efficiency like electric lawn mowers, and buy electric or at least hybrid vehicles; and vote with our palates by eating less or no meat, to save vast amounts of grain and water while reducing toxic waste from factory farms.

We humans must care more about how we treat the Earth. In March 2019, two whales washed ashore dead, one in the Philippines with 88 pounds of plastic trash in its stomach, and one in Italy with almost 50 pounds of plastic. Allowing the oceans to be so choked with our trash shows that as a species we just don’t care.

Yet on this 50th anniversary of Earth Day we’d better start to care as if our world depends on it. It does.

Frank Lingo, based in Lawrence, Kansas, is a former columnist for the Kansas City Star and author of the novel “Earth Vote”. Email: lingofrank@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2020

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