Climate watch: Why Earth Day has changed over the past 50 years
Do you like change? Most of us do not. We get used to our neighborhoods and favorite restaurants. We find comfort in a routine of sports events, church services, and social gatherings. But change is inevitable.
When Earth Day first began in 1970, despite its association with radical hippies, its motives were profoundly conservative, to conserve the earth as it was. Celebrants wanted to keep dangerous pollutants out of rivers, prevent corporate encroachments on wilderness, and bring awareness of the wonders of nature.
Fifty-four years later, Earth Day has taken on a different character. It is no longer sufficient to advocate for the preservation of the status quo because the dangers we face are different. Now our greatest threat is climate change. If we want a livable world for ourselves and other creatures, we must stop burning fossil fuels. Our energy must come from electricity and that electricity must come from clean energy. This task is so enormous that many of us have not really got our minds around the changes that will take place.
Once in a discussion about how our community could address climate change, a participant said that he knew we would have to make changes, but he hoped we would not change too much because he loved State College just as it is. We can all appreciate that sentiment. But the reality is that change is going to happen. The main question is what will that change look like?
It will not look normal to us. In one scenario, our economy will be based on clean energy, which means the construction of millions of new solar panels, windmills and batteries. We will drastically cut back our use of energy and live more modestly, while our smaller economies will be spending enormous amounts removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In another scenario, we will not make those changes, and the weather will become increasingly extreme. Stronger storms will wreak havoc, heat and drought will hurt agricultural productivity and cause famines, melting ice sheets will raise sea levels and threaten major cities, and mass migrations from places that are no longer habitable will cause unrest.
Which vision of change do we prefer? To save our world from the worst effects of a changing climate, we need to make substantial changes to our economy. We must engage the productive capacity of our corporations to build the new economy. And we must commit public policy to immediate and wide-ranging change.
Fortunately, such change has already begun through national legislation. The Inflation Reduction Act has incentives for rapid deployment of clean energy and for wide-ranging energy conservation efforts. We can do our part by reducing our use of fossil fuels and making our lives more energy efficient. The IRA offers many incentives for ordinary citizens to transform their houses and transportation.
Heat pumps, for example, will cool and heat our homes more efficiently and save us money in the long run. Tax credits (already available) and tax rebates for moderate and lower-income households (coming soon) will help us finance needed changes.
The State College chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby is committed to helping people electrify their homes and to promoting solar energy. Future columns in this Climate Watch series will explore ways in which all of us can make our lives more energy efficient and save money. Topics will include heat pumps, solar co-ops, electric cars, and much more. Please stay tuned and on this Earth Day make a commitment to positive change.
Sylvia Neely is co-leader of the State College chapter of Citizens’ Climate lobby and can be reached at PaStateCollege@citizensclimatelobby.org .
