I vividly remember the ecstatic, seemingly infinite hopefulness engendered by the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, especially the tent set up in Manhattan's Union Square to give us a delicious taste of truly unpolluted air. Such an excruciating contrast to now: the nurdly Übermenschen in absolute, triumphantly sociopathic control via their puppet-Fuhrer Trump; the end-times-worshiping Christonazis fanatically embracing ecogenocidal apocalypse; the relentlessly vengeful Neoconfederates methodically repealing every humanitarian advancement our species ever achieved; We the People too eternally divided by identity politics and neoliberal self-obsession to ever mobilize an effective resistance; the rest of the world too terrified by the longstanding U.S. policy of "Better Dead than Red" to dare intervene; our Mother Earth provoked to merciless fury by six millennia of patriarchal infected-blanket misogyny; and our species -- for the first and only time in its 200-thousand-plus years of existence -- thus reduced to the entirely rational condition of utter hopelessness. Yet some of us, Ms. Richardson amongst them, fight on, too courageously empathetic to abandon the living, too determinedly benign to surrender to the Absolute Evil by which we are now so sorely beset, our only sure reward the final certainty our relentless faithfulness to humanitarian intent was also the defiant preservation of our personal honor.
Listening to the first half, the history behind Earth Day, fond memories and pride were evoked. Unfortunately, the second half evokes depression, anger, and total disbelief in human stupidity.
This is a flat-out land grab. Doug Burgum just handed control of America’s public lands, parks, tribal programs, and wildlife protection to a fossil fuel CEO who was never confirmed by the Senate. That’s not reform, it’s corruption. Tyler Hassen now controls 500 million acres of land, 574 tribes' welfare, and billions in natural resources. He answers to no one but the oil industry. Burgum says it’s about saving money, but that’s just a cover. This is about selling off public land to private developers. Our parks and public lands aren’t some giant bank account to be cashed out. They belong to all of us. Turning them into profit machines for billionaires is a betrayal of the American people. It’s not about managing the land better, it’s about gutting it for short-term gain. This move is dangerous, unconstitutional, and completely un-American.
I definitely remember the first Earth Day. I was in 9th grade. We lived in a well-to-do, North Shore suburb of Chicago that bordered Lake Michigan. Despite the wealth of that suburb, its inhabitants could not enjoy the lake due to the dead fish that "populated" its shoreline because Lake Michigan was SO polluted.
I have returned to my old hometown a number of times over the past fifteen years. Thanks to the environmental changes implemented after 1970, the beach there is now pristine. I despair that the progress made over the last 50-plus years will be destroyed by the incompetent administration now running the country.
Anyone remember Hickel of Alaska? I was young enough that I don't recall all his politics, just that he had his name in the papers & pissed a president off. I just know my Hickel relatives were impressed by him being involved with our government. Guess I need to read some history.
This is heartbreaking, why does it always come down to "how much money we can make from the land," Never some of this land is sacred to the Native Americans who were here well before us. As I see it it's just another assault on our natural resources that would be better left alone. Just another slap in the face to those of us who camp on these grounds and love them at the same time and don't want them harmed "just to make more money."
I wrote to my congressmen today inspired by today's episode and the urgency to stop the administration from turning back the clock on environmental protection and the destruction of the EPA by DOGE.
Heaven help us all. 47 et al. will kill everyone and everything on the plane given the chance. And they can’t even imagine that they are included in “everyone”.
At the rate our globe is heating, primarily due to the GHGs, produced by our mindless burning of fossil fuels, we may see an unlivable (for 50% of our current populations) 3 degC in Europe by 2028, and globally by 2032. The only reason we're not on fire now is the sequestration of global heat production by oceans and ice. Wait 'til our children and grandchildren (if there are any) realize what we've done to their lives and dystopian dark futures. They'll put a bounty on anyone over 30. Very few insects this Spring down here in Marietta, Ohio, so some birds but fewer every year. We are inheriting the whirlwind we've created and so deserve. Have a blessed evening.
Never, ever, ever, forget who punched deal leasers ticket to the white house and the opposing party that failed to sustain themselves as being an able functioning political party.
On that first Earth Day in Hillsdale New Jersey we opened a nature trail with teaching stations that the fourth graders made. The first conservation commission in Northeastern New Jersey had tapped the maple trees with the school children and the nearest school had boil the sap down to syrup. Town commissioners flipped pancakes and the town turned out to celebrate.
Many of Hillsdale's shade trees or sugar maples along the old streets and next year we taught each of the schools how to tap and make syrup. I I understand they are still doing it.
I have been living in the Islands of Northwest Washington for the last 4O years. At 88 I have participated in 50 years of work for conservation of the gift the Earth gives us. We have made great gains but this has been interrupted by incredibly swift destruction and promises of an Armageddon.
We rallied once and yes the shores of Lake Michigan are now pristine, and rivers are not currently ablaze but we are running out of time. The tipping point is very near. The folly of the current administration is real. It will be more than Rome that burns this time if our current Nero succeed with the 2025 playbook.
They should call themselves the Selling Off America's HERITAGE Foundation. 574 sovereign nations have all human rights to the land and all upon it when the USA abnegates its treaties with those nations. The Heritage Foundation is willing to sell the very Soul of America as they have bartered away their own. No pity for them and no power either.
Thank you for your clarity and bravery, Heather! Women will save our sacred democracy. AOC/Crockett would be a diverse and inclusive ticket for 2028: https://democracydefender2025.substack.com/p/aoc-crockett-2028
Good to recall the pesticide problem now that the admin is actively working to destroy the EPA.
I vividly remember the ecstatic, seemingly infinite hopefulness engendered by the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, especially the tent set up in Manhattan's Union Square to give us a delicious taste of truly unpolluted air. Such an excruciating contrast to now: the nurdly Übermenschen in absolute, triumphantly sociopathic control via their puppet-Fuhrer Trump; the end-times-worshiping Christonazis fanatically embracing ecogenocidal apocalypse; the relentlessly vengeful Neoconfederates methodically repealing every humanitarian advancement our species ever achieved; We the People too eternally divided by identity politics and neoliberal self-obsession to ever mobilize an effective resistance; the rest of the world too terrified by the longstanding U.S. policy of "Better Dead than Red" to dare intervene; our Mother Earth provoked to merciless fury by six millennia of patriarchal infected-blanket misogyny; and our species -- for the first and only time in its 200-thousand-plus years of existence -- thus reduced to the entirely rational condition of utter hopelessness. Yet some of us, Ms. Richardson amongst them, fight on, too courageously empathetic to abandon the living, too determinedly benign to surrender to the Absolute Evil by which we are now so sorely beset, our only sure reward the final certainty our relentless faithfulness to humanitarian intent was also the defiant preservation of our personal honor.
Listening to the first half, the history behind Earth Day, fond memories and pride were evoked. Unfortunately, the second half evokes depression, anger, and total disbelief in human stupidity.
Thank you Heather, you are a patriot and hero.
Selling America
This is a flat-out land grab. Doug Burgum just handed control of America’s public lands, parks, tribal programs, and wildlife protection to a fossil fuel CEO who was never confirmed by the Senate. That’s not reform, it’s corruption. Tyler Hassen now controls 500 million acres of land, 574 tribes' welfare, and billions in natural resources. He answers to no one but the oil industry. Burgum says it’s about saving money, but that’s just a cover. This is about selling off public land to private developers. Our parks and public lands aren’t some giant bank account to be cashed out. They belong to all of us. Turning them into profit machines for billionaires is a betrayal of the American people. It’s not about managing the land better, it’s about gutting it for short-term gain. This move is dangerous, unconstitutional, and completely un-American.
The oligarchy at work! Selling our future for a their benefit now.
I definitely remember the first Earth Day. I was in 9th grade. We lived in a well-to-do, North Shore suburb of Chicago that bordered Lake Michigan. Despite the wealth of that suburb, its inhabitants could not enjoy the lake due to the dead fish that "populated" its shoreline because Lake Michigan was SO polluted.
I have returned to my old hometown a number of times over the past fifteen years. Thanks to the environmental changes implemented after 1970, the beach there is now pristine. I despair that the progress made over the last 50-plus years will be destroyed by the incompetent administration now running the country.
Unbelievable! Putting the public lands in the hands of the energy industry. I'm not sure whether to scream or cry. Maybe both?.
Thank you Heather for calling attention to this.
Thank you. The department of the interior updates are so disturbing and so underreported.
Anyone remember Hickel of Alaska? I was young enough that I don't recall all his politics, just that he had his name in the papers & pissed a president off. I just know my Hickel relatives were impressed by him being involved with our government. Guess I need to read some history.
This is heartbreaking, why does it always come down to "how much money we can make from the land," Never some of this land is sacred to the Native Americans who were here well before us. As I see it it's just another assault on our natural resources that would be better left alone. Just another slap in the face to those of us who camp on these grounds and love them at the same time and don't want them harmed "just to make more money."
I wrote to my congressmen today inspired by today's episode and the urgency to stop the administration from turning back the clock on environmental protection and the destruction of the EPA by DOGE.
Great stuff here. I commend you on your mindset, command of your material, approach and execution of your efforts. Just the facts, Mam. Well done.
Thank you for caring so much!
Heaven help us all. 47 et al. will kill everyone and everything on the plane given the chance. And they can’t even imagine that they are included in “everyone”.
At the rate our globe is heating, primarily due to the GHGs, produced by our mindless burning of fossil fuels, we may see an unlivable (for 50% of our current populations) 3 degC in Europe by 2028, and globally by 2032. The only reason we're not on fire now is the sequestration of global heat production by oceans and ice. Wait 'til our children and grandchildren (if there are any) realize what we've done to their lives and dystopian dark futures. They'll put a bounty on anyone over 30. Very few insects this Spring down here in Marietta, Ohio, so some birds but fewer every year. We are inheriting the whirlwind we've created and so deserve. Have a blessed evening.
Heather, you are a tireless worker on so many fronts. Please take care of yourself. We NEED YOU!!! 😍🥰
Well said, Dr. Richardson. We must eliminate the reasonings of these rich people in power.
Never, ever, ever, forget who punched deal leasers ticket to the white house and the opposing party that failed to sustain themselves as being an able functioning political party.
Dog do I like this wording, deal leasers, thank you moderator.
On that first Earth Day in Hillsdale New Jersey we opened a nature trail with teaching stations that the fourth graders made. The first conservation commission in Northeastern New Jersey had tapped the maple trees with the school children and the nearest school had boil the sap down to syrup. Town commissioners flipped pancakes and the town turned out to celebrate.
Many of Hillsdale's shade trees or sugar maples along the old streets and next year we taught each of the schools how to tap and make syrup. I I understand they are still doing it.
I have been living in the Islands of Northwest Washington for the last 4O years. At 88 I have participated in 50 years of work for conservation of the gift the Earth gives us. We have made great gains but this has been interrupted by incredibly swift destruction and promises of an Armageddon.
We rallied once and yes the shores of Lake Michigan are now pristine, and rivers are not currently ablaze but we are running out of time. The tipping point is very near. The folly of the current administration is real. It will be more than Rome that burns this time if our current Nero succeed with the 2025 playbook.
They should call themselves the Selling Off America's HERITAGE Foundation. 574 sovereign nations have all human rights to the land and all upon it when the USA abnegates its treaties with those nations. The Heritage Foundation is willing to sell the very Soul of America as they have bartered away their own. No pity for them and no power either.