Earth Day, 2025

 

The infamous Earthrise photo from Apollo 8 (1968). We all live on that blue marble.

It used to be that Earth Day was a big thing.  The very first one, in 1970, was successful enough that I, as a 13-yr old 8th grader, made an 8mm movie on Kodachrome for a school project, in the relative backwater of upstate NY. My memory of making it was of contrasts - a glass beer bottle rolling down the roadside, a Cooper’s Hawk flying from its nest. I don’t recall much else.  It was taken with a Kodak Brownie 8mm movie camera, and as I have told Mike Raso of the Film Photography Project - it was the beginning and end of my celluloid movie-making.  I am confident that there was nothing remarkable in that 3.5 minute movie. I had to have obtained the camera, etc., from a teacher at my school, because the only camera in my house at the time was a Kodak Instamatic.  Anyhow, I have no idea where the movie ended up, and 55 years later, we are in a global environmental crisis.  You would think that we could have, as a society, kept at the job to have a better planet, but here we are.

Bowling Green, OH April 5, 2025

The original Earth Day led to the passage of the Endangered Species Act, The Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act, and most importantly, the Environmental Protection Agency. That was under the Nixon Administration, brought down later by the petty crimes at the Watergate Hotel. When I say petty, they were, compared to the current criminal assault on our country’s resources by the Trump regime. The mere fact that a rapist felon is in charge is bad enough. All of our country’s resources - both natural, human, and constitutional, are being pillaged by a mediocre person of wealth and privilege to benefit the ultra-wealthy.  The battles of the 1970s were thought to be over.  We made the country better because it was the right thing to do - not as an altruistic act, but because we realized that our own survival was threatened by decades of pollution and unwise use of our resources.  Photography undoubtedly played a role in that. If you haven’t seen photos of smog in New York, the burning Cuyahoga River, and windrows of dead fish on Great Lakes shores, you should.  The public outcry and subsequent action by the government made real change possible. Today, they are all under assault by Trumpism.  Climate Change? Ignore it. Polluted water? Big deal. Endangered species? Who cares? Healthy people? Only if you are rich.  This is the slippery slope we are on with Trump. How we escape it and make our country (and the world) a better place is going to take some doing. We need more empathy, not less. We need more people to stand up to authoritarian decrees, not less. It’s no longer a left vs right issue, it’s a right vs wrong issue. It’s an issue of people with wealth and means who think the world is theirs alone.

Lower Yellowstone Falls, by William Henry Jackson.

Photographs by William Henry Jackson brought attention to Yellowstone, and it became our first National Park.  Later, Ansel Adam’s photos and connections with the Sierra Club brought attention to conserving our natural resources, the saving of redwoods, and more.  Photography is one way of showing the state of things, and also of showing change over time.  It can help bring attention to issues that concern us.  It’s also a way for us to connect and share our relationship with the natural world.  Whether it’s wildlife photography, landscape photography, or something on the micro scale of nature, the images can shape our perception of the world we live in.  

Sept. 2023, Arcadia Marsh in NW Michigan.

So, if you do anything this Earth Day, use the day to engage with nature, photograph things that connect you with it, and share them.  Tomorrow, get up and call or write your Congress person or whoever you feel deserves to know that "We are mad as hell and ain’t gonna take it anymore."  That spirit of the 1970s of shared responsibility for our planet needs to take over.

Lake Michigan sunset, Ludington, MI. Sept. 2023.