Fifty years ago, on April 22, 1970, millions of people took to the streets in cities and towns across the United States, giving voice to an emerging consciousness of humanity’s impact on Earth. Protesters shut down 5th Avenue in New York City, students in Boston staged a “die-in” at Logan airport and demonstrators in Chicago called for an end to the internal combustion engine.
CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite hosted a half-hour Earth Day special, calling for the public to heed “the unanimous voice of the scientists warning that halfway measures and business as usual cannot possibly pull us back from the edge of the precipice.”
Today, Cronkite’s words are eerily familiar. Warnings of impending ecological crises are now commonplace. But are we prepared to heed the warnings? In 1970, the answer was yes. The same might just be true, once again, in 2020.
The first Earth Day helped catalyze more than two decades of sweeping legislative changes, first at national levels, and then through multilateral institutions seeking to tackle global environmental problems.
Within a few years of the Rio Earth Summit, other powerful forces of globalization began to emerge. In 1995, the World Trade Organization was created, ushering in a new economic order that has exerted a profound impact on planet Earth and its inhabitants.
Today, 25 years into our new globalized era, we must reckon with the unintended consequences of progress, much as we did in 1970. Between 1945 and 1970, and again from 1995 to 2020, our societies have transformed through geopolitical shifts, economic expansion and technological developments.
While the specifics are different, there can be no doubt that both periods left a strong imprint on planet Earth. But are we ready to tackle profound challenge of redefining our relationship with Earth?
Much as Carson did in the 1960s, we still struggle against vested economic and political interests intent on maintaining the status quo. We must also recognize that the problems are now embedded deeply into the fabric of societies; tackling climate change, for example, requires nothing short of re-imagining the global energy sector.
We face a daunting task, but there are signs of hope, particularly as we see a resurgence of youth movements willing to challenge our notions of progress. The first Earth Day protesters were overwhelmingly young; they didn’t have a Greta Thunberg, but they did strike from school. And just as their message caught the attention of Walter Cronkite, at least some adults are listening now.
Disruption and new opportunities
What will it take to move us from listening to action?
Perhaps the current COVID-19 pandemic could provide a trigger. Our relentless drive to move goods and people across the planet has been hijacked by a microscopic bundle of protein and RNA, inflicting significant human suffering and damage on the global economy.
The pandemic is, no doubt, a global health catastrophe. But the disruption of the status quo also presents an opportunity to question our core values and to re-examine our relationships with each other and with Earth’s natural systems. For COVID-19, as with our most complex environmental challenges, any viable solutions will require co-operation rather than isolation across borders.
Must we also wait for more dire impacts of climate change before taking action? Now is the time to mitigate environmental threats through proactive measures, developing the societal tools to maximize human well-being in a rapidly changing world.
The economic pain inflicted by COVID-19 should not limit our ability to take bold action. The environmental triumphs of the 1970s and 1980s occurred against a backdrop of significant economic uncertainty after the post-war boom.
When the current crisis passes, as it surely will, we must seize the opportunity to re-imagine, and to create, a different kind of future, much as the original Earth Day protesters did on April 22, 1970.