An Ohio river so polluted that it caught fire. A spectacular California coastline covered in slimy oil from an offshore drilling snafu. These were the two main events that prompted the first Earth Day event 40 years ago in New York.
Now, the annual observance is marked everywhere from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. But despite the huge global awareness about environmental issues, activists maintain that the ecological problems are worse than ever.
That might seem counterintuitive, given the fact that the air is cleaner and the water cleaner in many industrialized countries than it was in 1970.
Across the world, average citizens are taking to heart the mantra to reduce, reuse, recycle, and trying to minimize their environmental impact. They even thronged by the millions to see the high-tech eco-fable Avatar, which became the greatest box-office hit in history and almost, by definition, one of the most important cultural influences of the era.
Companies seem to be slurping up the eco Kool-Aid just as voraciously. On every continent, businesses trumpet their achievements in going green. But looked at from a global standpoint, say many environmentalists, there isn’t much to celebrate this Earth Day.
The level of harmful emissions marches ever upward, and the destruction of critical natural habitats continues unabated. As the failure at the Copenhagen climate-change conference demonstrated, the political will to tackle these threats to the planet on a global level just isn’t there.
In the United States, where the first Earth Day kick-started the global environmental movement, 48% of people believe that the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated, according to a Gallup survey taken earlier this year. That dramatically affects the support for the far-reaching measures like carbon taxes and strict fuel-efficiency requirements that many say are needed to tackle the big problems.
While individual conservation should no doubt be lauded, many environmentalists argue it’s not nearly enough.
