What does Earth Day mean to you?

If your answer is ambivalent, it may be because you’ve never known why it was founded, or perhaps you’ve lost touch with the initial concerns that drew 20 million Americans into the streets to protest on April 22, 1970. That’s understandable. That’s back to an era where computers had yet to replace manual typewriters, when phones were mostly black and attached to a wall via a curly cord and cell phones were still 30 years from common use. It’s also when some American rivers were so polluted with fossil fuels and other industrial chemicals they caught on fire.

The early environmental movement, heralded by the Earth Day protest, was prompted by widespread industrial pollution, smog in American cities so thick (caused by vehicles burning leaded gasoline) it presented serious health problems, and major environmental disasters such as the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill when an oil tanker wrecked offshore and poured three million gallons of oil onto 35 miles of California coastline killing wildlife and bringing televised coverage of the nasty damage into the American’s living rooms night after night. That incident was followed by the Cuyahoga River fire in June of that year, as that heavily polluted, oil-slicked river in Cleveland, Ohio caught fire for the 13^th time. At roughly the same time, the unregulated use of chemicals like DDT was becoming widely known as the cause of severe damage to bird and fish populations, including threatening the American Bald Eagle, as popularized by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring written in 1962.

By April 1970, more than 20 million Americans would demand environmental action in the wake of the harm being caused by industrial neglect, culminating in Earth Day protests that drew 10% of the population — which remains the high-water mark of political action for a single event in the nation’s history.

The result of those protests stirred Congress to pass the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and create the Environmental Protection Agency — legacy legislation that not only significantly improved health outcomes and living conditions for Americans in every state for the past 50-plus years, but also established the benchmark for countries around the world.

Today, it’s no surprise, the Trump administration is trying its hardest to gut the Clean Water and Clean Air acts and to turn the EPA into an agency doing the bidding of his major supporters with big oil and gas, as well as to promote AI and data centers.

The good news is Trump’s anti-American — and anti-world — policies are spurring resistance.

As Ripton environmentalist Bill McKibben said in his Third Act post this Wednesday, many of the original protesters behind Earth Day, and those who have since joined Third Act and other environmental groups, remain committed to “standing up not just to Big Oil but to Big Tech—to the small group of companies trying to take control of our landscape and our energy system in the name of AI and data centers. Thousands of you joined us on a call earlier this week as we worked toward a data center moratorium; around the country in the last months you’ve managed to get small-scale solar legislation in and through one state legislature after another. 

 “We’re standing together for the same things that motivated people back in 1970,” McKibben continued, “local control of resources, a vision of a world where everyone gets to flourish. Some of the issues have shifted: we weren’t talking about global warming or AI back then. And some of the tools have changed too: we didn’t have cheap solar power yet. But the basic idea remains: if we show up, in the street and in the legislature and in all the places that decisions are made, if we defeat the representatives of Big Oil and Big Tech—then we have a fighting chance.”

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 Is Earth Day still a priority?

Among all the pressing issues facing Americans today, is Earth Day that important? Can’t we shuttle it aside and focus on protecting civil liberties, supporting Ukraine, stopping Trump’s losing war with Iran, re-instate the subsidies for health care cut under Trump’s “big bad ugly bill,” as well as address the dozens of other disasters the Trump administration has unleashed?

In its editorial this Wednesday, the Rutland Herald aptly explained why the importance of Earth Day remains paramount.

“As several commentary writers have noted in the lead-up to Earth Day, we must keep it front of mind precisely because these (other) crises are not separate from the health of our planet — they are deeply intertwined with it.

“We see it every day: The climate crisis is no longer a distant or abstract threat. It’s a daily reality marked by record-breaking temperatures, catastrophic floods, prolonged droughts and intensifying wildfires. We keep living through our own versions of them. These events are not isolated; they are part of a systemic disruption that affects food systems, water availability, infrastructure and public health. When crops fail (or even get a late start) or water becomes scarce due to drought, instability follows. Communities are displaced, economies falter and tensions rise.

“Consider the headlines and how resource scarcity exacerbates conflict. There are too many examples. Regions already facing political fragility are often the most vulnerable to climate impacts. As arable land diminishes and water sources dry up, competition intensifies. What begins as an environmental challenge can quickly escalate into social unrest or armed conflict — or worse. In this way, the climate crisis acts as a threat multiplier, amplifying existing divisions and creating new fault lines.

“Against this backdrop, Earth Day is not some symbolic gesture — it ought to be a necessary focal point. It provides an opportunity to recalibrate priorities, to remind governments (local, state and federal), corporations or businesses and even individuals that environmental stewardship is foundational to long-term stability and security. Ignoring it does not make other crises easier to solve; it makes them harder…

“To deprioritize environmental action in the face of other crises is to compound the burden placed on those who will come after us. Earth Day is a reminder of that responsibility — a call to think beyond immediate concerns and consider the long arc of human and planetary well-being.”

“…Ultimately, today is about public awareness — one of Earth Day’s core functions — and it remains crucial. Policy shifts rarely occur in a vacuum; they are driven by informed and engaged citizens. When Earth Day fades from public consciousness, so too does the pressure on leaders to prioritize environmental action. Keeping it front of mind ensures that the climate crisis remains a central consideration in decision-making at every level, whether it is at the select board level, at the State House in Montpelier, or in the U.S. Capitol.

“To treat Earth Day as an afterthought is to ignore a fundamental truth: There can be no lasting peace, prosperity or security on a degraded planet. We have a role to play even when it feels hard and daunting. To stand still is never the answer.”