Threats to Earth grow intense

Allan Winkler

Allan M. Winkler is a history professor emeritus at Miami University.

Allan Winkler

Our earth is under attack. Not from malicious invaders from outer space. Not from provocative North Koreans. But from narrow-minded economic interests and their political allies who are threatening our planet’s very existence by their shortsighted actions. A sense of environmental awareness was a long time coming in the United States. As America expanded across the continent in the 19th century, the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age built an economic empire, but always with an eye on personal gain.

And in the process, they paid little attention to maintaining the natural beauty of the nation. The millions of buffalo on the Plains were in the way, and so gave way to the crops that were planted and the cattle and sheep that grazed on the land.

Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, was the first President concerned with conservation. An amateur naturalist who loved the outdoors, he used his executive authority in the early years of the 20th century to more than triple the land allocated for natural forests. He also used what he called the “bully pulpit” to raise public consciousness about the need to save natural resources and appointed a National Conservation Commission to inventory natural resources. And in the process, he angered those interests who simply wanted to use the land for their own ends.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, shared Theodore’s sense of environmental consciousness. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, he created the Civilian Conservation Corps which both put people back to work and helped tend to the natural environment in long-overdue ways.

He also embarked on policies to deal with the ravages of the dust storms that attacked the heartland of the country. And he pushed through the huge federal project to harness water power for the public good through the Tennessee Valley Authority.

There was no time for environmental activity during World War II, and little interest in the 1950s, as big business boomed once again. Then, in 1962, naturalist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring alerting the public to the consequences of DDT, and in 1964, architect Peter Blake wrote God’s Own Junkyard: The Planned Deterioration of America’s Landscape, recording the ravages of unbridled capitalism. Those books and others began to foster a renewed sense of environmental awareness.

By 1970, 53 percent of the population considered air and water pollution to be major national problems.

Responding to that growing consciousness, Republican Richard Nixon oversaw the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1963 and the Water Quality Improvement Act in 1970, and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), also in 1970. There was a clear sense of the need to protect the environment that governed for almost 50 years.

Until now. Though the best scientific minds, in this country and around the world, have pointed to the ravages of climate change, the Trump administration has turned its back on that expertise. The President himself has called it a hoax and has declared that the United States

would pull out of the Paris accords, ratified by virtually every country in the world, to try to counter global warming in a small but consequential way.

All this in the face of warning signs that at the very least should make us worry. In the last several weeks, we have faced the devastation of three of the largest storms in our history. Meanwhile, glaciers in Antarctica are calving – breaking off – at an alarming rate, in response to global warming. Penguins there, which have come to certain sites for centuries to lay eggs and hatch their young have changed their patterns as the climate has changed. And at the same time, Arctic sea ice is melting at an equally alarming rate.

Meanwhile, wildlife is dying off. In the past 50 years, two-thirds of all existing wildlife has ceased to exist.

Scott Pruitt, head of EPA, is singlehandedly seeking to dismantle the agency he directs. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has called for scaling back 10 national monuments, including Bears Ears in southern Utah, to open the land up to economic exploitation.

The situation is desperate. The actions of this administration threaten the very existence of our planet.

We need to respond before it is too late.