Guest editorial: My Earth Day appeal

Unofficial Earth Day flag designed by John McConnell. Public domain image.

Editor’s note: Guest editorials are by local leaders or experts with specific knowledge of a topic and may contain opinions. Views expressed in any editorial are always exclusively those of the author.

This is a follow-up and addition to last week’s Earth Day Guest editorial: What does Earth Day mean to you? by Sybil Kolon.

by Sybil Kolon

Many people have looked to me over the years for information and advice on a wide range of environmental and natural resource issues. I am not an expert on anything, but I do have a pretty good idea of how the natural world works and how people have manipulated and abused our air, land, and water over the decades. I also know quite a bit about the efforts of our state and federal governments to rein in those abuses. As those reins are being let loose by the new federal administration, it is time for all of us to mobilize in response.

I was a junior in high school during the first Earth Day in April 1970. I was already an advocate for nature by then. I wrote a paper about the ravages of pollution on Lake Erie, which was considered “dead” due to industrial waste and sewage.

I went to Michigan Tech, then to Michigan State, to study forestry. I didn’t want to be a forester; I wanted to write about nature. Life takes many turns. I did work as a forester for a few years. And there were a few garden center and county park jobs along the way. But the bulk of my career was with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, in the Jackson District Office. My job was to identify the companies that had polluted soil and groundwater and hold them to account.

Since retiring, I have devoted much of my time to environmental issues with a focus on connecting people to nature. There are two good reasons to connect to nature: 1) time spent in nature improves health and well-being; 2) doing so will inevitably lead to maintaining and restoring nature when people appreciate how dependent they are on it. It’s the ultimate win-win scenario, and it is self-perpetuating.

In my career as an environmental quality analyst, I learned how the law is used to compel liable parties to clean up their messes. Simply put, when people are exposed to contaminated air, water, and soil, their health is at risk. Asking the liable parties nicely rarely works; the laws that mitigate that risk must be cited and enforced. When the liable party cannot be found, the government steps in to do the job. If we find out later who did it, we make them pay us back!

“Part 201” is shorthand for the state law that regulates environmental remediation, the statute I helped enforce. The following quote is from the legislative finding on which it is based: “That there exist in this state certain facilities containing hazardous substances that pose a danger to the public health, safety, or welfare, or to the environment of this state.” That is the foundation for everything that follows.

There are many other state and federal laws that have been enacted to protect human health and the environment. These protections apply to our everyday lives, not just to exposure to obviously polluted air, water, or soil. We have drinking water and air quality standards for a reason. There are permits for discharges to the air and water for the same reason: to protect the overall health and well-being of humans and the environment we live in. If that environment is not healthy, we cannot be healthy.

In many ways, we and the Earth are not healthy. Humans can take full responsibility for that. Nature can recover from hurricanes, floods, and droughts, but it has a harder time recovering from the effects of our industrial past and present, in addition to our excessive use of fossil fuels. All of the regulations enacted since the first Earth Day have improved human and environmental health. Lake Erie and many other places are recovering. In terms of human health, look at the regulations surrounding the metal lead, a neurotoxin known for centuries to be poisonous. Restrictions on its use in paint and plumbing pipes, and limits on its concentration in drinking water, took decades after the first Earth Day to enact. We cannot allow the new administration to cancel all of that in a matter of months. The damage done has barely been felt, but it is coming. We cannot wait to act.

Only the federal government can protect human health and the environment across our great nation. Yet our current administration issued an Executive Order that requires departments to evaluate the environmental laws they enforce by September 2025, with the aim of eliminating any that don’t meet their guidelines in 2026. This is short-sighted at best, and a thinly veiled attempt to loosen vital regulations that protect us all.

The need to take care of our environment is now obvious to almost everyone. Most of us understand that our past abuses of the Earth are unsustainable.

Cutting government spending and lowering taxes will not solve all problems. Who will protect human health and the environment when there is no money left to pay government workers to do it?

There is a remedy. It is in our own hands. It’s just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz; we have had the power all along. We have the technical know-how to solve these problems. It is up to us to insist that these resources be applied. It should start with reinstating all of the programs and funding that have been suspended.

We are at a tipping point like no other. Now that we understand what is at stake, we must demand that our elected representatives put a halt to this assault. I will be doing everything I can for as long as it takes to resist this misguided effort, including going into the streets on a regular basis.

Please join me in whatever capacity you can. We must rise up together to defend the Earth.

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by Sara Swanson

Sara Swanson is an editor, writer and founder of the Manchester Mirror.