Earth Awareness Needed Every Day Pro-Earth Day: Our Planet Still Needs Protection

It’s been 25 years since the first Earth Day rallied public support for the stewardship of this fragile planet on which our lives depend. But it took two centuries of accelerating industrial plunder to make Earth Day popular.

Now that the environment is getting cleaner, can Americans afford to roll back their environmental laws?

C’mon. We’ve tried laissez-faire capitalism. Anyone who’s forgotten where that leads can visit the stripped forests and polluted cities of the Third World.

Current calls to weaken U.S. environmental laws come from the interests that made those laws necessary. Certainly the air is cleaner, the water is purer. Certainly, environmental groups have made mistakes and sounded false alarms.

But the earth still needs protection. Rather than weakening air, water, waste-disposal and species protection laws, we need to raise environmental policy to a higher level. The next, unmet need is for the systematic stewardship of whole ecosystems. Industry, from real estate developers to loggers to farmers to hydroelectric dam operators, must find new, sustainable practices that tread lightly on the Earth and its species.

It is a deception, the argument of industry’s demagogues, to say that we must choose between the critters and the jobs. Scientists rapidly are finding new ways to make forestry, for instance, sustainable. Responsible developers - yes, growth is an environmental issue - can and do preserve green space and farm land.

What’s in it for us? Biologists know that in the web of life, all species are interdependent. Genetic engineering offers miracle crops and miracle cures - but these advances depend on DNA from a full range of surviving native species. Yet runaway development, population growth and resource extraction industries are placing whole ecosystems in danger. The real issue is bigger than the salmon, or the spotted owl.

A healthy environment is good, long-term, for business. More important, a healthy environment is essential to life and the pursuit of happiness. History shows the environment will lose unless the law stands strongly on its side. The first Earth Day shed light on the need for aggressive, remarkably successful laws. The 25th Earth Day should strengthen our resolve to protect and improve them.

xxxx

The following fields overflowed: SUPCAT = COLUMN; EDITORIAL - From Both Sides CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board