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Earth Day
Fifty years ago today, I put on a filter mask for my first political protest march, through the smoggy streets of Pittsburgh (where I lived then) demanding government action to reduce air and water pollution. My parents were sure I would rip the mask off as soon as it became uncomfortable, but even at age 6 I understood the rhetorical point we were trying to make, and kept it on for the whole march.
Within three years, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Environmental Protection Act were signed, and air and water quality actually started improving. Now Pittsburgh has much better air, New York (where I live now) has much better air, pretty much every city in the U.S. has much better air -- and that was before CoVid-19 shut down most automobile traffic and a lot of businesses, so we've had even cleaner air for the past month.
Now I put on a filter mask to go to the grocery store for different reasons: not to symbolically protect me from pollution caused by human activity, but to actually protect those around me in case I have an asymptomatic case of a disease nobody had heard of six months ago, naturally occurring but spread by human activity.
Within three years, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Environmental Protection Act were signed, and air and water quality actually started improving. Now Pittsburgh has much better air, New York (where I live now) has much better air, pretty much every city in the U.S. has much better air -- and that was before CoVid-19 shut down most automobile traffic and a lot of businesses, so we've had even cleaner air for the past month.
Now I put on a filter mask to go to the grocery store for different reasons: not to symbolically protect me from pollution caused by human activity, but to actually protect those around me in case I have an asymptomatic case of a disease nobody had heard of six months ago, naturally occurring but spread by human activity.