Earth Day

Gabriellebirchak/ April 22, 2020/ Modern History, Uncategorized

Every April, peo­ple all around the world cel­e­brate Earth Day. This day is very spe­cial to all of us, as we all come togeth­er to cel­e­brate this gor­geous blue ball on which we live. The Earth is our gift, and on some lev­el, we are just vis­i­tors. It is inspir­ing to see so many peo­ple gen­uine­ly care and make tremen­dous efforts to take care of this plan­et. And for all of you who make dai­ly strides to take care of this plan­et, thank you! You moti­vate and inspire us to love our Moth­er Earth. This moti­va­tion is vital. It only takes one per­son to moti­vate peo­ple all around the world to take care of Earth. More­over, that is all it took in 1962 When Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, hit the bookstands.

Silent Spring doc­u­ment­ed the hos­tile envi­ron­men­tal effects caused by pes­ti­cides. Rachel Car­son was an Amer­i­can author, con­ser­va­tion­ist, and marine biol­o­gist. Her first three books, titled Under the Sea-wind, The Sea Around Us, and The Edge of the Sea, are elo­quent and beau­ti­ful books that immerse us in the beau­ty of our oceans, what they con­tain, and how they sus­tain our plan­et. Addi­tion­al­ly, The Sea Around Us was turned into a doc­u­men­tary for which Car­son won an Acad­e­my Award.

How­ev­er, her fourth and final book before her pass­ing, which was Silent Spring, changed the way we looked at our plan­et and, even more so, changed the way we love our plan­et. For many years before pub­lish­ing the book, she stud­ied and researched envi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion, specif­i­cal­ly the dam­ages made to our plan­et by syn­thet­ic pes­ti­cides. Dur­ing the 1950s and the 1960s, many farm­ers used pes­ti­cides, specif­i­cal­ly dichlorodiphenyl­trichloroethane (DDT), in their crops. DDT and its break­down prod­uct, Dichlorodiphenyldichloroeth­yl­ene (DDE), con­tribute to can­cer, mis­car­riages, low birth weight, male infer­til­i­ty, and dam­age to the ner­vous sys­tem, and dam­age to the liv­er. Silent Spring addressed the dan­gers that DDT posed. Car­son argued that as DDT steeps into our food chain, the con­cen­tra­tion becomes heav­ier and can do sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to the human body. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, chem­i­cal com­pa­nies fought back with fierce oppo­si­tion against this book. Regard­less, the book sold over 500,000 copies in 24 coun­tries and had a very influ­en­tial effect.

Mean­while, as cars start­ed to evolve from the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, man­u­fac­tur­ers were chal­lenged with pro­vid­ing fuel to a vehi­cle that would not cause knock. Knock hap­pens when fuel is pre­ma­ture­ly ignit­ed into the engine cylin­der, which ends up degrad­ing the engine.

In 1921, engi­neers with Gen­er­al Motors dis­cov­ered that tetraethyl lead pre­vent­ed engine knock. What was use­ful about lead for them was that lead had a low­er pro­duc­tion cost, unlike ben­zene and ethanol. So, they start­ed to cre­ate lead­ed gasoline.

The ear­ly warn­ing signs about lead­ed gaso­line began in 1924 when 15 refin­ery work­ers died of lead poi­son­ing. As a result, the U.S. Sur­geon Gen­er­al halt­ed the pro­duc­tion of lead­ed gaso­line. At the same time, a pan­el inves­ti­gat­ed the dan­gers of lead in gas. This pan­el found that pro­longed expo­sure to lead could result in “chron­ic degen­er­a­tive dis­eases of less obvi­ous character.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the Sur­geon Gen­er­al ignored the warn­ings and set a stan­dard of lead con­tent to be used in our gaso­line. In the 1960s, a health research study found that chil­dren exposed to these low lev­els of lead con­tributed to ane­mia, behav­ioral dis­or­ders, low IQ, learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties, and even nerve dam­age. Even so, the use of lead­ed gaso­line con­tin­ued until 1996.

In 1969, Sen­a­tor Gay­lord Nel­son, a junior sen­a­tor from Wis­con­sin, inspired by Carson’s book and the anti-war protests, want­ed to cre­ate an edu­ca­tion­al plat­form for col­lege stu­dents to learn about air and water pol­lu­tion. He reached out to Repub­li­can Con­gress­man Pete McCloskey to serve as his co-chair and then con­tact­ed activist Denis Hayes. Togeth­er they cre­at­ed what they called teach-ins on cam­pus­es to teach pub­lic con­scious­ness envi­ron­men­tal awareness.

The day they would imple­ment this would be April 22, 1970.

They cre­at­ed events on col­lege cam­pus­es all across Amer­i­ca. They added on oth­er out­lets, includ­ing church­es and orga­ni­za­tions, to get involved with this new day that they decid­ed to name Earth Day.

Even­tu­al­ly, Amer­i­cans from the east coast to the west coast, about 10% of the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion, began to take to the streets, parks, and audi­to­ri­ums. Their goal was to edu­cate oth­ers on the impor­tance of rebuild­ing the plan­et from 150 years of indus­tri­al dam­age. What is tru­ly inspir­ing about Earth Day 1970 is that it brought togeth­er sup­port from Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats, farm­ers, urban dwellers, busi­ness­es, and polit­i­cal lead­ers. This effort all start­ed with Carson’s book! With­in the first year of that first Earth Day, envi­ron­men­tal laws were imple­ment­ed, includ­ing the Clean Air Act, the Nation­al Envi­ron­men­tal Edu­ca­tion Act, and the Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act. Short­ly after the first Earth Day, Con­gress passed the Clean Water Act.

By 1990, Earth Day had gone glob­al. Two hun­dred mil­lion peo­ple in 141 coun­tries gath­ered to march, protest, pro­tect, and clean up our plan­et. By the year 2000, a record 5,000 envi­ron­men­tal groups in 184 coun­tries were involved with urg­ing local gov­ern­ments to imple­ment clean energy.

Regard­less, cli­mate deniers con­tin­ue to dis­re­gard the warn­ings that sci­en­tists have been declar­ing for decades. Sad­ly, many of these cli­mate deniers con­tin­ue to restate the pro­pa­gan­da writ­ten by oil and gas giants.

Every year, British Petro­le­um (BP), Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and oth­er large oil com­pa­nies spend about $2,000,000.00 on lob­by­ing to defer and block cli­mate-moti­vat­ed poli­cies. Addi­tion­al­ly, they tout that they are reduc­ing green­house gas­es to address cli­mate change; how­ev­er, their efforts are min­i­mal at most. The large oil com­pa­nies lie to the pub­lic, stat­ing that they are cli­mate experts when their pri­ma­ry goal is to pro­tect their assets. The real­i­ty is that, to use a pun, their assets are dinosaurs. At some point, oil and gas will have no mon­e­tary worth.

I could con­clude this pod­cast with an elo­quent speech about how we need to save our plan­et. There are no elo­quent words that can impress the impor­tance of pro­tect­ing this one sin­gle plan­et that we all live on. The math is there. The stud­ies are there. The analy­ses are there. Sci­ence has repeat­ed­ly eval­u­at­ed and con­clud­ed, with peer review stud­ies, that our activ­i­ty on this plan­et is destroy­ing it.

The chlo­ro­flu­o­ro­car­bons in the air, the lead­ed gaso­line, and the pes­ti­cides that are killing our bees cause can­cer. The increased con­cen­tra­tions of green­house gas­es, the burn­ing of fos­sil fuels, defor­esta­tion, pol­lu­tion, the plas­tics in our ocean, live­stock pro­duc­tion, fac­to­ry farm­ing, exten­sive use of elec­tric­i­ty, deplet­ing the nat­ur­al marine envi­ron­ment, and the igno­rance all con­tribute to the destruc­tion of our plan­et. As edu­cat­ed indi­vid­u­als, all we can do is repeat these warn­ings and hope to impact those who try hard not to listen.

Our plan­et is dying. In 2014, a study found that cur­rent extinc­tion rates were 1,000 times high­er than they would be if humans were not around. As of last year, it was esti­mat­ed that more than 26,500 ani­mal species are threat­ened with extinc­tion. The web­site RedList.org lists these endan­gered species, and the list is exten­sive. More than 27% of all species on the plan­et are threat­ened with extinc­tion. Thir­ty-three per­cent of our coral reefs are threat­ened. More­over, in 100 years, we will lose over 67% of our endan­gered species. Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, humans suf­fered from the ret­ri­bu­tion of nature because they chose to eat endan­gered animals.

Our plan­et is dying. The Earth has had its mass extinc­tions in the past. How­ev­er, the cli­mate change we are cur­rent­ly expe­ri­enc­ing is up to 50 times faster than the most rapid cli­mate changes that ever hap­pened in our Earth’s his­to­ry. We are now expe­ri­enc­ing glob­al wild­fires. With­in the last 30 years, hur­ri­canes with cat­e­gories 4 and 5 have increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly around the world. Green­land and Antarc­ti­ca had about 81 bil­lion tonnes of ice loss per year in the 1990s. By the 2010s, ice loss was cal­cu­lat­ed at 475 bil­lion tonnes per year.

How­ev­er, we do not have to live this way. What is won­der­ful about the human species is that we have the abil­i­ty to change our envi­ron­ment. We can act upon our choic­es and make con­sci­en­tious actions to bet­ter our fam­i­lies, the com­mu­ni­ty, the world, and our­selves. Tak­ing care of the plan­et is a choice. More­over, it is a sim­ple choice. There are so many things we can all do to help. How­ev­er, I want to sug­gest this first: go out­side. Open your eyes and look at the sky. Lis­ten care­ful­ly to the birds. Breathe the out­side air. Just take a deep breath and enjoy that won­der­ful, peace­ful moment. That is Earth giv­ing back to you. So my ques­tion to you is: when do you plan to give back to the planet?