This week marks 56 years since the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. The genesis of the first Earth Day had begun a few months earlier when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire because of the flammable chemicals that had been dumped into the river by nearby industrial plants. The blaze was broadcast on national TV newscasts, sparking (no pun intended) the modern-day environmental movement.
The first nationwide Earth Day led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency by President Richard Nixon and the landmark legislation of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.
For those of us who were around at that time, Earth Day gave us hope that we had reached a turning point in the effort to eliminate the air and water pollution that threatened the health of every American, not to mention the impacts upon sensitive environmental areas and wildlife.
There have been many victories for the environment since that first Earth Day, many of which we have seen first-hand in our own neighborhoods. We recall that in our youth growing up on Pt. Shirley in Winthrop, swimming was forbidden on the Boston Harbor side because of the high levels of pollution emanating from the untreated waste from the MDC’s sewer plant on Deer Island, not to mention the effluents spilling out of the sewer pipes of homes and factories sewer throughout the Metro Boston area. Paint peeled from homes and cars in Winthrop, Chelsea, and Revere because of the fumes emanating from adjacent waterways in the 1950s and ‘60s.
The Standells’ song Dirty Water, which is played after Red Sox victories (which unfortunately have been few and far between this year), is an homage (of sorts) to the high level of pollution in the Charles River and serves as a cultural reminder of an era when Boston Harbor had the “distinction” of being known as the dirtiest in the country.
We rowed on the Charles River in college and sailed in Boston Harbor, so we had an up-close view of how foul the river and harbor were on a daily basis.
The creation of the Mass. Water Resources Authority in the mid-1980s eventually resulted in the beautiful and clean Boston Harbor and Charles River environment that we enjoy today, both improving the quality of life for all of us who live in the Metro Boston area and generating an economic boon along our waterfront area.
On the other side of the country, smog enveloped Los Angeles with dangerous levels of air pollution on a daily basis in the period from 1950-80. Although California still has the overall worst air quality in the U.S., the air quality in its major cities, especially LA, is far better today than it was before clean air standards were implemented.
When the first Earth Day was observed in 1970, the term “climate change” did not even exist. But it was just a few years later in that decade that scientists at major oil companies predicted — with great accuracy (as things turned out) — that the carbon emissions from their products would cause the climate to warm.
However, the oil companies hid that information from the public, similar to how the tobacco companies had kept secret their research establishing the link between smoking and lung cancer .
Today we know that climate change is both real and is accelerating — the United States just had its warmest March on record. It also is generally acknowledged that there is nothing we can do to reverse it. In 1975, the world’s total carbon emissions were 17 billion tons, of which the U.S. was responsible for a bit more than 25% with 4.4 billion tons. Today, the U.S. essentially is at that same level with 4.8 billion tons of carbon emission. On a per capita basis, we emit about 35 percent less carbon today than we did in 1975.
However, the rest of the world’s output has increased from 12.6 billion tons in 1975 to 33.8 billions tons today. The U.S. could become carbon-neutral tomorrow, yet the amount of emissions by other countries has almost tripled from what they were in 1975 and is continuing to accelerate.
In addition to the well-known effects of climate change — powerful storms, heat waves, droughts, massive wildfires, and rising sea levels — a new threat to the environment and to the well-being of every living thing on earth has emerged.
Ironically, another cultural touchstone from the 1960s, the 1967 movie The Graduate, highlighted a product that has become ubiquitous in the world today. The most famous line in the movie was one word: “Plastics,” which was the career advice given to Dustin Hoffmann’s character, Benjamin, by a neighbor who told him that the future lay in the plastics industry.
Little did we know then that by the first part of the 21st century, microscopic nanoplastics would be detectable in every organ (including our brains) and tissue of every human, animal, and plant on the planet, even in the most remote corners of the earth. Plastics are in the air we breathe (especially in our homes), the food we eat, and the water we drink.
So yes, it’s nice that we can swim in Boston Harbor today. But that small pleasure for two months each year provides little comfort given the inevitability of the dire consequences of climate change and the conversion of our bodies essentially into toxic waste sites since that first Earth Day in 1970.
Fifty six years after the first Earth Day, the state of the planet and our environment is this: The past was bad, the present is worse — and the worst is yet to come.