Fifty years ago, before I was born and as I was told by history, a US Senator from Wisconsin named Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day after he witnessed devastation caused by the 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Senator Nelson and Congressman Pete McCloskey recruited Denis Hayes from Harvard University to coordinate a national staff of eighty-five who promoted events across the US to raise public awareness of environmental issues. On the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans rallied together to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment and for protection against the deterioration of the environment. Subsequently, the national movement led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and a series of bipartisan legislation of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts. In the 1990s, Denis Hayes expanded the Earth Day Network to 141 countries. Today, more than 180 nations observe Earth Day as a global secular holiday.
I’m glad that the celebrated alum Rachel Carson from Chatham University is mentioned in the Earth Day history. Ms. Carson’s seminal work Silent Spring (1962) “represented a watershed moment” as history recorded it. (See book cover here) I’m even proud of the United States (in its bipartisan political climate fifty years ago) for leading the country and the world on all forefronts of environmental topics such as water, energy, air and wildlife.
Moving forward fifty years later, in 2020, the US is the only nation in the developed world that has signed but not ratified the Basel Convention on hazardous waste. There is no US federal law that requires the recycling of plastic waste or includes a ban on foreign export of e-waste. And the US is withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement under the current administration. The withdrawal will come into effect on November 4, one day after the 2020 US presidential election. Earth Day is more than a one-day demonstration; it symbolizes lifelong civic engagement in fighting for a cleaner, safer, more just and sustainable world.
It’s a stereotype to label a person who advocates for environment and nature an activist. In some literatures Rachel Carson was regarded as an environmental activist rather than a female scientist. Don’t you think a person who values economic growth higher than anything else is an activist as well? I think in our society we have many a financial activist and economic activist who has led, or misled, us toward wasteful consumption behaviors and money-oriented mindset. We’d rather cover our ears and eyes to the truth, allowing such activism to dominate our lifestyle and judgement.
I’ve been told by people with high socioeconomic status that in a capitalistic country such as the US, it’s not uncommon that people with power monetize strategies in order to make a change for good intention or not. You can reward someone with a buy-one-get-one-free coupon, for instance, for buying your new product. You can also reward someone with a big fat bonus for not going to a competitor company. There’re too many examples like this. We can reward someone for doing something or not doing something. We can penalize someone with fines for breaking a rule. Corruption involves bribery, and bribery is about money. No matter whether corruption gets full explosure, corruption is happening in businesses and in governments. Money means a lot to all of us but it’s not everything. When we feel the economic pinch such as COVID-19-related unemployment, we ask for help from our employers and governments. A trillions-of-dollars-worth economic rescue plan is granted.
But what about a pay cut or job loss resulting from poor health or the need of caring for newborns and an ailing family member? The healthcare system in the US is far from good compared with OECD counterparts, a club of industrialized countries. American people need to wait for days and weeks for non-emergency medical consultations. Administrative bureaucracy is as cumbersome in the health industry as in governments. And many people’s insurance premiums go up year-on-year, and yet the services dwindle and a wide range of exams and drugs are not fully covered. Many folks who died of COVID-19 could not even afford proper healthcare because they were mentally, physically or even financially unable. Do health inequities get the same bipartisan attention as wealth inequities from our governments?
What about the burdensome price tag of daycare to many new parents? Politicians like using zip codes to gauge their polling demographics. The longer I live in America, the more I understand why zip codes unofficially determine Americans’ social status. Different zip codes do matter in the education quality of a child and the accessibility of fresh produce and a healthy diet in stores. Different zip codes do demonstrate the administrative discrepancy in exercising the voter’s right and pricing the same consumption goods in different chained stores. All of this, health, education, and employment, is social capital. As we look back the last 50 years from the first Earth Day, in the US and many capitalistic countries, economic growth has outpaced social development.
If you’re an economist or like one, perhaps you’ll agree with me that we’re all activists because we advocate for different needs. In order to survive, we have our needs and we demand our needs to be fulfilled. For sustainability, we value individual wellbeing as much as our material needs.
Ideally, if a majority of global citizens can benefit from a good quality of healthcare, affordable housing, lifetime education, efficient mass transportation and safe and sustainable food sources, we will do less damage to the world of finite natural resources and the ecosystems on which other living things—other than humans—also depend for their survival.
What if part of the trillions of dollars rescue package is allotted for creating jobs to build healthy, sustainable institutions and systems for social capital? Will we be less susceptible to risk that will cost us more to rebuild than to prevent that risk from happening?
On the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the first (or maybe the only) 50th anniversary that I observe in my lifetime, I think we really can do a lot for not only the voiceless environment and endangered species, but also for our own survival on this Planet.
Waste management is a big industry. How can other living things live for tens of thousands of years without causing environmental disasters? Animals also pee and poop in their own right. Plants emit carbon dioxide at night when sunlight is not available for photosynthesis. Humans produce waste: solid waste, food waste, electronic waste, packaging waste, water waste, air pollution, to the topical medical waste, you name it. It’s inevitable that we’ll handle tons of medical waste during and after COVID-19. But the human waste seems to contribute little positively to the environment. Mother Nature has her limits to turn waste into treasure, but humanity’s ingenuity is boundless. Sadly, we haven’t acted quickly to protect social and natural capital as we did to rescue our economy in the fallout of COVID-19. Don’t you see there’s a problem but also an opportunity for humans to invest in waste management?
To celebrate Earth Day 2020, I’d like to borrow the statement from earthday.org to remind us all: “We have two crises: one is the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The other is a slowly building disaster for our climate.” If only the United States could once again lead this climate movement. If only we, the capable, could help those underprivileged to increase social mobility, our world will be a better place—like Michael Jackson sang—if we make efforts toward inter- and intragenerational equity and sustainable development.