This column is written for millennials and their younger siblings. I want to share some modern U.S. history that took place before you were born.
I moved to California in 1970, arriving in Los Angeles after a transcontinental bicycle trip. When we crossed the California border from Arizona, we couldn’t ride on to LA on Interstate 10, since bicycles weren’t allowed. Our detour took us north through the Mohave, and then over the mountains through Big Bear. It was a steep climb getting up to the top of the San Bernardino Mountains. Instead of being rewarded with a panoramic view of the L.A. basin, from the top we looked down on a sea of brown smog. After two months of riding in fresh air and wide open spaces, it was horrible descending into this toxic soup.
I ended up settling in Aromas. Hiking the Anzar Hills and looking east across the San Juan Valley toward Hollister back then, there was a similar brown cloud that obscured the gorgeous vistas and fouled our lungs.
The year of my arrival in California, 1970, also marked the birth of the modern environmental movement. The first Earth Day took place that year. A consensus took hold that the by-products of our prosperity, pollution of the nation’s air and water, needed to be controlled. Major amendments to the federal Clean Air Act that year began the process of regulating automobile and factory air pollution. By the end of the decade, the toxic brown clouds of smog were largely gone.
When I hiked up to the ridgetops in the Anzar Hills, I now had a clear view of the gorgeous Diablo Range east of Hollister. There was a dramatic reduction in the toxic particulates that we had been breathing just a few years earlier, and since then, the improvements have steadily continued. This is one of the great successes of environmental regulation, working hand-in-hand with a growing economy to prevent the excesses of unbridled capitalism.
And it hasn’t just been the air. The federal Clean Water Act was passed in 1973. Previously, it was unsafe to swim in most of the rivers in the U.S. Some of them were such a toxic stew that you could literally light them on fire, with industrial waste products dumped directly into streams and rivers. A large percentage of human sewage flowed into rivers without any treatment, creating health threats to humans and other life forms downstream. The Clean Water Act brought comprehensive controls over what can be discharged into our nation’s lakes and rivers. The results have been extraordinary. Many rivers are now swimmable, fish and other wildlife have returned, and riparian habitats are once again a rich recreational resource.
You millennials and your younger siblings probably take clean air and clean water for granted. You didn’t live through the time when our environment was horribly fouled, and you didn’t experience the remarkable success story of the federal government using science to find solutions, and then implementing those solutions with dramatic effects.
Based on the current political climate, you might be surprised to hear that these environmental milestones were passed with bipartisan support in Congress. These air and water quality regulations are administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which was established by Republican President Richard Nixon. The controls that the EPA implements on air and water pollution are supported by a large majority of Americans.
Now, the new Republican administration is talking about gutting the EPA by slashing its budget and staffing, and possibly even eliminating it entirely. There actions are clearly not motivated by their duty to protect the American people and our rich natural environment. The newly-appointed head of the EPA is doing the bidding of large corporations who want to reduce their cost of doing business, with no regard for how this might damage the air we breathe and the water on which life depends.
Millennials et al, you will soon inherit this Earth. It’s time to stand up and defend it!