Mother Earth deserves 365 days of love and respect

Bill Studenc, The Mountaineer, Waynesville, N.C.
·4 min read

Apr. 21—This weekend marks the 53rd occurrence of a day designed as a reminder that we must take care of our dear Mother Earth.

It was April 22, 1970, when some 20 million people across the U.S. participated in the inaugural Earth Day, showing support for protecting our environment and sharing information about human activities that endanger the third rock from the sun.

Earth Day is now international in scope, with hundreds of millions of people pausing annually to reflect on the impact of their own environmental footprint and to encourage leaders to enact policies to protect Earth and all creatures that inhabit it.

The realization that Earth Day is upon us had me digging through a stack of notebooks in my home office, where I store papers and PowerPoints from my days as a student in Western Carolina University's master's program in public affairs.

I dusted off a notebook containing summaries of lectures and reading assignments from my class in environmental policy, and remembered that the first class of that semester focused on how Earth Day propelled environmental issues into the national spotlight following a perfect storm of ecological disasters.

First, "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson was published in 1962. The book was a stinging scientific exposé of the harmful environmental effects of the widespread pesticide use including DDT, linked to a decline in the bird population.

In January 1969, a major oil spill occurred off the California coast, dumping more than 3 million gallons of crude into the Pacific, killing tens of thousands of dolphins, sea lions, seals and birds.

Also in 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, caught on fire as oils and other pollutants burst into flame, capturing the nation's attention.

Against that backdrop, an activist named John McConnell, moved by a dramatic photograph of the Earth taken by astronauts aboard Apollo 8 during lunar orbit, proposed the first day of spring 1970 as a national day to draw attention to the fragility of the planet. McConnell did so out of his Christian belief it is the responsibility of humans to safeguard the environment that God made.

A few weeks later, a U.S. senator from Wisconsin suggested April 22, 1970, for a "teach-in" on environmental issues at schools across the nation. The result, as the cliché goes, is history. The environment moved front-and-center for the first time in U.S. politics.

The Environmental Protection Agency was established through an executive order signed by Richard Nixon later in 1970. Hey, the guy wasn't all bad, even with that nasty Watergate and wire-tapping business. Following the EPA's creation, the ensuing decade represented a period of major federal action in the environmental arena.

Congress passed the Clean Water Act of 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 and the Superfund Act of 1980, and also strengthened the Clean Air Act originally established in 1963.

Fast-forward to 2023. Ohio's Cuyahoga River is no longer a threat to spontaneously combust. Haywood County's Pigeon River no longer runs dark brown with drifting chunks of white foam. Gasoline is now lead-free, and electric vehicles are becoming increasingly popular. DDT is banned as a pesticide, and more Americans are recycling.

On the homefront, a list of Earth Day activities recently published in this newspaper included cleanups of greenways and waterways, roadside litter pickups and educational opportunities for kiddos, with a full morning of events set for Monday, April 24, at Haywood Community College.

Circling back to my first environmental policy class, we also watched the animated 1972 film "The Lorax," based on the Dr. Suess children's book. You remember the Lorax, right...the little critter who spoke for the trees, when humans were chopping them as fast as they please, and who pined for "the days when the grass was still green and the pond was still wet and the clouds were still clean?"

As the Lorax said, "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

Or, to borrow a phrase from signs sold at local gift shops, "If momma's not happy, then nobody's happy." Let's strive to keep momma — as in Mother Nature — happy, not just one day out of the 365 on the calendar, but every day.