This year marks the 55th Earth Day. At the first one in April 1970, I found the lawn of my college with a bunch of booths informing us of ecological issues.
Fast-forward to 2024 and we’ve made some important improvements in our treatment of the planet, and at the same time many of our actions are abysmally inadequate.
A perspective on the past could foretell our future. Bipartisan bills in the early 1970s included the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act — all excellent laws. The Environmental Protection Agency was created as one means to enforce them.
Catalytic converters for cars were required, and they reduced carbon monoxide emissions by 97%, making our air much cleaner. The news video of a river in Ohio burning from petrochemical pollution shocked the country’s conscience and inspired crackdowns, so factories and power plants had to stop dumping their toxic refuse into waterways.
That was a great start, which proved that we can find solutions, but then the progress stalled. The environment became a partisan issue with the Republican Party choosing to serve the interests of fossil fuel firms, who contributed millions of dollars to their campaigns. The Democrats weren’t much better, many also accepting big payouts from polluters.
By the 1990s, climate scientists told us of the perils of global warming but many Americans scoffed at the science. Anti-scientific sentiment took hold, encouraged by disinformation ads financed by the fossil fools. (Secret documents have since revealed that Exxon knew in the 1960s that burning their gas would cause global warming.)
Some other countries, especially in Europe, have committed more seriously to sustainability, and over there environment is usually not a partisan issue. But the USA, the world’s biggest polluter per-capita, shows scant leadership in world treaties because of our partisan divide.
Now decades of disregarding the dangers have come back to bite us. A March 2024 Associated Press article was headlined “UN weather agency issues ‘red alert’ on climate change after record heat, ice-melt increases in 2023.”
Climate scientists say that, worldwide, we are close to going over a rise of 1.5 Centigrade (over 2.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Consider if your child’s temperature went from 98.6 up to 101 and stayed there. That’s not when reasonable people would dismiss thermometer science. Like in humans, the Earth’s temperature is sensitive and a spike is a serious situation.
The net effect is climate chaos. It’s already happening in the form of stronger and more frequent hurricanes, longer droughts, and horrific forest fires. Coastal cities are in danger of drowning. Miami will be home to the dolphins and not the football team. Except the dolphins will head north to cool off. Ocean temps in August 2023 exceeded 100 degrees off Florida’s coast. Heat like that kills many fish and sea mammals.
Such disasters have persuaded people of the problem. In an Oct. 2023 survey, CNN found that 71% of Americans believe the climate crisis is causing some harm to their fellow citizens. That’s a big jump from other polls in the past where it was under 50%.
Still, the deniers double down on disinformation. Even a mainstream newspaper like the Kansas City Star published in January an anti-environmental opinion piece claiming that electric cars are garbage. The Wall Street Journal is extremely conservative, but even their car expert, Dan Neil, wrote a well-informed article that same week defending electric cars against such distortions.
On the bright side, prices of solar panels and wind turbines have plummeted while their efficiency has soared. So it’s economical to be ecological for home and business owners. Batteries are getting better, even for storage of sustainably sourced power. Biodegradable plant-based plastics are available, if only packagers would provide them. There are even microbes which eat plastic if we’d use them.
“Earth’s issuing a distress call,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in March. “Fossil fuel pollution is sending climate chaos off the charts.”
It’s up to all of us. If choose our food, our fuel, our leaders as if our lives depend on it, maybe we can save the Earth from ourselves.
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. See his website: Greenbeat.world
From The Progressive Populist, May 15, 2024
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us