Fifty years. It was 1970 and Richard Nixon was President when the first Earth Day was established. The year before, the Cuyahoga River had caught on fire. Old photos of NYC and LA show cities shrouded in smoke. Something had to change.
The environmental movement has gone through many seasons. The Sierra Club was founded in 1892 by John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt and was about protecting large swaths of land. The country was young then and places like Yellowstone NP and others wouldn’t be here today if not for their work. But in 1970, the land, water, and air were being polluted and something had to be done. It was during the presidency of Nixon that the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and NEPA were passed. Nixon also created the EPA and NOAA. We were running amok and these actions were needed to prevent us from destroying our only home.
Through the “decade of the environment” and the early period of the conservation movement, we landed in the 1980s. While we now see many references today about Environmental and Climate Justice, the EJ movement was started in the 1980s by one who is known as the father of the Environmental Justice movement, Dr. Robert Robert D. Bullard. When a chemical or petro plant is sited, you can bet it’s in a People of Color community. Waste sites? The same. Toxic, hazardous waste? You wouldn’t see these in West Lake, Houndslake, or Woodside. The original term used to describe these kinds of practices (as I understand it) was environmental racism. It seems (white) people are just now catching on. As Dr. Bullard has said, people of color are the wrong complexion for protection.
Today those monumental environmental protections have been weakened and we see the attacks on public lands, opening them up for the extraction industries like oil, fracked gas, mining, and timber. Donald J. Trump can’t be blamed for all that’s taken place, but he has taken degradation to new depths. What’s prevented the wholesale destruction of our natural resources are groups like the League of Conservation Voters, National Wildlife Federation, and the Sierra Club. People will balk at the ‘Big Green Groups’ for all the fundraising and political work, but the fact is if it weren’t for the legal work of groups like The Sierra Club, we’d be in a much worse place. And to do this work means you have to have staff, legal staff.
You don’t truly have to be a diligent student of history to see where we’re headed if we don’t make some changes. Whether you believe in climate change or not, one thing is clear and that’s the fact that we’re destroying the natural world around us. Our choices and how we live on the land are not sustainable and we must address the systemic issues that have created the mess we find ourselves in. If it’s true that everyone I meet is my mirror, that what I throw out comes back to me, then it must also be true that the harm I bring to the land, water, air and other creatures that I share this common home with will eventually come home to roost. Nature is resilient and will bounce back, but we must take personal responsibility in all ways.
I’ve read that in Indigenous cultures when they make a decision they try to look at how it will impact the seventh generation. We must look past the short term satisfaction and think about how our choices will affect future generations. Our journey is a spiritual one and our choices reflect our collective spiritual state.
