April 22 is Earth Day, an opportunity to celebrate nature, reflect on the impact humans have on our environment, and to reaffirm our support for environmental protection.
The observance has its roots in the public outrage at the gross environmental degradation perpetrated around the country, and the lack of political will to do anything about it. Then-U.S. Senator and environmental activist Gaylord Nelson concluded that nothing would be done until enough people made a public show of their outrage, so he organized the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970.
“It's been an important moment for our country to take stock and to do more to actually conserve the environment,” said Monica Medina, Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental And Scientific Affairs.
“Earth Day is an important moment for all of us to stop and think about how important the environment is to the quality of life, to our economies and to our human health,” she said. "This year's theme is invest in our planet, which couldn't be more important. The United States is working very hard to increase its investments in things like parks and protected areas, water quality, conservation, all sorts of ways that are going to improve the quality of life, changing our energy infrastructure and all of our energy goals to be much more renewable.”
“All of that will lead to many, many benefits for quality of life, but also improve jobs and [the] economy,” said Assistant Secretary Medina, who also serves as the Special Envoy for Biodiversity and Water Resources. “New protected areas, both on land and in the ocean. . . are key ways that the government is making progress on conserving our planet and our environment.”
“We’re investing in green infrastructure to make our coastlines and our country much more resilient to climate change and to extreme weather events. And all the money that we're spending in the infrastructure bill to improve our infrastructure in ways that will be much more environmentally beneficial,” she said. "We're changing our energy infrastructure in order to be much more dependent on renewable energy that's clean and green.”
On Earth Day, let us remember that our environment largely determines the quality of our existence. “If we don't have a clean and healthy environment,” said Assistant Secretary Medina, “we really can't sustain ourselves and live the kind of quality of life that we'd like to have.”
