OPINION: Earth Day should be every day
By David J. Garcia
Bridge Staff Intern
Published Thursday, April 22, 2021
It’s that time of year again when we get together—socially distanced and masked up—to do something for our Earth. Earth Day has a great history, and to me, is a really important day.
Earth Day reaches its 51st year. A pretty significant milestone and it was started by Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.) and many peaceful protestors; they were really adamant in showing the crisis of polluting and damaging our natural environment. It was met with some resistance, but the very first Earth Day was held April 22, 1970.
The April 22 date was proposed to make the day virtually always available in school or on campus. This day was essentially made to teach future generations about making our environment clean and safe, conserving our nature, and to a better extent, saving our planet.
A 2019 NASA image of planet Earth.
This isn’t to say prior generations didn’t care about their world—Teddy Roosevelt really prioritized nationalizing lands for preservation reasons, like today’s Yellowstone National Park. The problem was the education of people; things were simply made without the environment in mind.
Take automobiles for example: For the first 50–70 years of their history, we did not regulate what came out of the tailpipe. We even put lead in our gasoline.
The upcoming day is a time we all agree to treat the Earth just a little more fair; we second-think throwing away that plastic wrapper and instead recycle it, or maybe we plant a tree. We all do different things of all kinds of impacts but we do them regardless.
Although this helps in many ways, I believe Earth Day is something we should do every day. We should care about the preservation of nature, keeping things clean and solving global warming.
An Earth Day plant.
I am celebrating Earth Day because I really care about my world; there’s too much I want future generations to see before we eventually suck the life out of the planet.
[Editor’s note: While April 22 is the official Earth Day date, many organizations continue efforts through the weekend with Laredo area cleanup efforts extending through Sunday this year.]
