On that first Earth Day back on April 22, 1970, I was so full of hope that people would sincerely start doing things that would save nature and the planet we all depend on. That black button on the left is from that first Earth Day, that was held at the university I attended. It was not a well attended event, because it was in Southern Indiana, and most of the students didn’t really care.
Nationwide, things did improve somewhat, Tricky Dick Nixon even established the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) in December of that year. Corporations were all eager to jump on the bandwagon with their advertising, but unseen were the millions of dollars of “dark money” that they spent to destroy any kind of regulations that might actually help the environment. Big Oil and coal played “greenwashing” ads while secretly financing a massive campaign to destroy any legislation that might prevent global warming.
Their money was well spent, because more and more carbon is pumped into the atmosphere every year, and most people still don’t care enough to do anything. Now with Trump, their efforts are out in the open. Trump told big oil if they gave him a billion dollars, he would do away with all of the restrictive legislation. They only came up with about $900 million, but that was good enough, and Trump as now gotten rid of all those laws that hampered big oil. He has banned the word “Climate Change” in his government, gotten rid of the collection of any data that might show the amount of carbon in the air, and even told his minions to never just say “coal”, but always say “Clean coal”.
Of course the deterioration of our climate will not stop just because the government won’t mention it, and things will become much worse, very quickly.
Sorry for all of the negativity, but it is what it is.
Today in McBride, we are having an Earth Day celebration at the local museum, with art work, music, and a film. I guess we will just have to keep hoping for a miracle to happen.
View my paintings: davidmarchant2.ca
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