Since its creation in 1970, Earth Day has turned from an idea into a world-wide movement to drive change, reduce waste, and save the planet. Forty-five years later, the fight to change is still an uphill battle.
In 2015, the level of frustration has to be maddening when one looks at our dependency on 19th century technology. It’s a slap in the face to the dreams people once had of us all driving flying cars at this point, but we remain grounded by our need for oil and gasoline to run combustible engines.
The embrace of antiquated sciences is something we should all release. Difficult, indeed, but Earth Day reminds us that we should all be fighting to break free of the ways that hurt this planet, and work together to invest in newer technologies. In the United States, we take pride in a nation full of entrepreneurs – men and women full of ideas, ingenuity, and the resources to make it work. But, the ideas that shaped this nation were born centuries ago by families named Rockefeller, Edison, Tesla, and Ford, with ideas to refine oil, produce electricity, and mass-produce automobiles. If these individuals could come back to today’s world, they’d shake their heads.
Yes, we’re not short of our own technological advances, but our perspective of the world has widened in the past 45 years. We live in a golden age for knowledge, where we can obtain information within seconds through our handheld devices; the same handheld devices that poison our waters if discarded improperly. Today, we ought to have a better understanding of how we impact the environment. Sometimes, it remains unclear as to whether or not that is true.
A University of Albany study released last week addresses a component to climate models used to project rising global temperatures. The concept of global warming dates back nearly as far as Earth Day itself, discussed by Ronald Reagan and George Bush in the 1980s, and continues on since then. Yet, somehow, it seems we’ve taken several steps backwards, with some camps not able to agree humans play a part in increased greenhouse gases, contributing towards increasing global temperatures. At worst, other camps can’t agree that the phenomenon is happening at all.
There is some hope as you look around town. More and more residents are choosing to install solar panels atop their homes, using the power of the sun as an alternative energy source. And, more people drive battery powered vehicles, a newer technology that takes us one step closer towards the right direction.
On this Earth Day, try to reflect upon what it is you can change to help improve our environment.
