Reflecting on the 50th Earth Day During a Time of Crisis: Lessons for Our Future
The COVID-19 pandemic has much to teach us about how we relate to our planet and environment
Across the United States, 20 million people of all ages and backgrounds united on April 22, 1970 to protect our planet and build an environmental movement from the ground up to chart a cleaner, healthier, and more sustainable future. The people who lent their voices to the first Earth Day created a groundswell of political change that helped establish the Environmental Protection Agency and enact bedrock conservation laws like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. Parents demanded change for their children, children demanded change for their future — and progress was won.
It was during this time that my father, former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, sounded the alarm about the creeping destruction of nature — what he termed ‘The Quiet Crisis.’
“Each generation has its own rendezvous with the land, for despite our fee titles and claims of ownership, we are all brief tenants on this planet,” he wrote. “By choice, or by default, we will carve out a land legacy for our heirs.”
Today, we are observing the 50th Earth Day — and the world looks much different than it did 50 years ago. The threats to our planet have drastically worsened. The quiet crises my father warned about have risen to a crescendo. We are facing down dual climate and nature crises that threaten life as we know it. We are in the middle of a sixth mass extinction — with 1 million species at risk of extinction — while climate change stands as an existential threat to our future.
And meanwhile, we are confronting a public health crisis that has profoundly shaken every aspect of American — and global — life.
Our most urgent challenge as a nation is providing the necessary resources and relief — public health and economic — so that New Mexicans and people all across this nation can recover from the COVID-19 crisis. Our focus must be on protecting the immediate health of our citizens and providing the support and emergency relief that people need to get back on their feet and back to their normal lives.
But in this time of crisis, we also must move forward with a clear vision about how we want our recovery to look — the shape and future we want our society to take in the aftermath of COVID-19. We must be clear-eyed about how we intend to emerge from the rubble of the COVID-19 pandemic — to build a more equitable, more secure, and healthier future where we are better equipped to face down the existential crises that will grip our planet and humanity itself.
So what are the lessons that we must take from this global pandemic? There are several that are especially resonant as we observe this 50th Earth Day.
First: the destruction of nature and ecosystems is not just a threat to our planet, but it is a threat to our public health. Scientists tell us that as we destroy the natural barriers between humans and wildlife, we will only see more and more zoonotic diseases like the COVID-19 pandemic.
SARS, MERS, Ebola, and HIV also are zoonotic diseases. The fact is — animal to human diseases represent the overwhelming majority of infectious diseases we face today, and one of the greatest public health challenges before us.
The science is clear that a major factor in the spread of disease is the both the illegal trafficking of wildlife as well as the loss and fragmentation of wildlife habitats and populations. When habitat shrinks and wildlife is exploited, it’s easier for zoonotic diseases to spread among animals and then to humans. So, we must conserve and protect habitat and biodiversity — if we want to protect ourselves.
Second: we must acknowledge and address that the people who are most vulnerable to this virus are communities who have been historically marginalized and who also often live on the front lines of environmental pollution. Low-income communities, communities of color and Native communities are bearing the worst consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic — just as they often bear the worst consequences of the environmental desecration and destruction too often caused by the rich and powerful.
Indeed, Native American and indigenous populations have been left behind for decades by the federal government when it comes to the delivery of health care, infrastructure, and essential services — despite the government’s obligations to Tribes. That means that Native communities are now among the most at risk to this pandemic. And meanwhile, Native lands have been desecrated for centuries, and the effects of climate change and nature loss are more acutely felt in Indian Country.
So, any path forward must be undertaken with equity and inclusion as our north star. We must ensure environmental justice for all. We must continue to build a diverse conservation and environmental movement that empowers traditionally marginalized voices — a movement that looks like America — if we are to achieve lasting progress.
Third: We also cannot afford to ignore how rapidly-accelerating, human-caused climate change and habitat destruction represent a chilling promise: that this pandemic is only the first of a series of devastating crises that threaten to profoundly alter and disrupt life as we know it.
As we grapple with the severe health, social, and economic pain of this pandemic, we must prepare ourselves for the reality that — if we continue down the current path we are on — the climate and nature crises will carry with them even more intense and immediate devastation across all facets of American life.
And yet, we do not need to be resigned to that future. We have it in our power to alter our path forward — to put ourselves on a better, more sustainable course.
Which leads me to a final, more hopeful, lesson for the future: at this difficult time for our nation, this crisis has shown us how deeply interconnected we all are — and it has shown us that we are capable of bold, collective action behind a unified purpose, if we just summon the will.
On this 50th Earth Day, people — especially young people and those who have historically been marginalized — are demanding bold action and demanding it now to fight climate change and save our planet. Like they did 50 years ago, the American public is breathing new energy into a resurgent environmental protection movement.
But today, just as federal leadership has lagged on the COVID-19 response, too many in power are refusing to act on climate or environmental protection, putting short-sighted economic gains over the public good. The Trump administration is the worst culprit — but the special interest grip on our politics stretches well beyond the White House. The will of the American people is not being represented.
As we have seen in the massive — and absolutely necessary — emergency relief packages that Congress has quickly crafted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the old and tired excuses for inaction have been exposed. We can do big things, but policymakers need to have the necessary courage and the determination — or they need to be forced into action by a groundswell of public energy.
So this week, and every week, I join the American public in their calls to action, in our shared vision for a cleaner, healthier future. And my vision includes concrete policy actions that we can take right now to confront the crises that our planet is facing:
- I introduced the Thirty by Thirty Resolution to Save Nature, to set a national goal to conserve at least 30 percent of our land and water by 2030 because our existence depends on the preservation of our natural environment.
- We need to tackle the pollution that threatens our future, which is why I introduced the first-ever bill to comprehensively tackle plastic pollution by holding corporations accountable for the amount of plastic waste they create, the Break Free from Plastic Pollution Act.
- And I have introduced legislation to put our country on a path to decarbonize the power sector by 2050 and prevent the planet from reaching the dire projections from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Above all, we must listen to and heed the warnings of science and to scientists — because, as this pandemic shows, we all pay the price when science takes a back seat.
And the science is clear: we must save our planet to save ourselves.
The challenges we face today are great, but the public has never been more energized behind action to save our planet than it is today. And with that energy, we can get this done — and save the planet for future generations.
Just a few years before his passing, my father and my mother, Lee, published a letter to their grandchildren. This was their call:
“Go well, do well, my children. Cherish sunsets, wild creatures and wild places. Have a love affair with the wonder and beauty of the earth.” — Stewart Udall
Now, with the wonder and beauty of the earth under threat on this 50th Earth Day, we must listen to that plea: that we do well — by the planet, and by future generations.
