April 22, 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day where 20 million people demonstrated to increase environmental awareness in America. In 1970, the EPA was established and legislation on pollution, clean water and endangered species was passed.
Fast forward 50 years and Earth Day is no longer a cause for celebration of the progress made in cleaning the environment and holding industries accountable for dumping toxic waste in our rivers and streams, for killing the oceans with plastic waste, oil and harmful chemical dispersants, for polluting land and air by mining and burning fossil fuels and saturating soil with toxic cancer causing pesticides. Instead, the EPA has been captured by corporate forces intent on lifting all regulations on industry to benefit their bottom line.
In the era of rapid climate change and global warming, we now face the deadly coronavirus pandemic linked to the destruction of habitat and forests. Wildfires, devastating hurricanes and tornadoes, and air pollution are threatening all life. Trump’s response to the pandemic has been to abolish clean air regulation.
On a positive note, this year, more and more activists want to make oil and gas publicly owned and democratically decide how to transition to a new economy based on clean renewable energy, as in the Green New Deal.
Please see below for articles that voice this fight. Send your articles to the People’s Tribune at info@peoplestribune.org
Wet’suwet’en Nation’s decade of resistance to pipeline escalates
Cathy Talbott is a former telephone operator, a job lost to automation. She was a homeless mother of two and fights for welfare rights. A former co-host of a weekly community radio program out of Carbondale, IL, “Occupy the Airwaves,” Cathy is the Environmental Desk for the People’s Tribune.
