From Artemis to Earth Day, a call to protect our Blue Planet

After the long, honest winter we’ve had here in New England, spring is taking its time. The sea breeze is still blowing cold, crocuses and daffodils are just finding confidence to push up through cool soil, the peepers are barely peeping. And yet the calendar insists: it’s mid-April. For those of us who work to protect water and the natural world, that means Earth Month is in full swing.

You probably know the origin story well. On April 22, 1970, millions of Americans attended teach-ins and protests in cities and towns across the country for the first Earth Day, sounding the alarm about rivers that caught fire, air that choked cities, forests stripped bare, and wildlife in freefall. The massive mobilization catalyzed by Earth Day forced Washington to act. In its wake came the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and other laws that didn’t just tidy up our landscape, but transformed it. They proved that when we decide, together, that something is unacceptable, change follows.

Today, much of that legacy is on the chopping block. Among the long list of outrages we are witnessing from the current administration, the radical undoing of the nation’s environmental laws and evisceration of the agencies that have been entrusted for decades to enact the will of Congress is as shameful as it is staggering. The staff of the Environmental Protection Agency has been cut by 50%, the US Forest Service is being dismantled, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has led the world in climate science, is being gutted. These rollbacks show up in dirtier water, more polluted air, and a future made less certain for communities that depend on and enjoy healthy ecosystems.

And yet, this is not the whole story. Not even close.

In recent weeks, millions of us were transfixed by Artemis’s journey around the dark side of the moon. For a brief moment, it seemed that the nation shared a profoundly moving experience. Who didn’t fall in love with the four astronauts, their courage and candor, grit and giddiness? Who wasn’t proud of NASA, our brilliant national space agency, and wiping away tears along with Mission Control staff after the six minutes of silence during re-entry and a perfect splashdown? Who wasn’t awestruck to see our small blue marble framed in exquisite resolution by the pockmarked lunar landscape, a profound reminder of our one and only planet’s breathtaking beauty and fragility? Artemis was a shot in the arm, a reminder that the United States can still be a beacon of hope and inspiration – and international cooperation – when we put our collective mind toward positive purpose.

While less cosmic and much closer to home, there have been other sources of hope and inspiration this spring across our Seven Rivers region. Communities are choosing to invest in clean water and a livable future. In Epping, voters last month approved a $38 million bond to make much-needed upgrades to the town’s long-troubled wastewater treatment plant and protect the Lamprey River.  In Exeter, residents backed $2 million in funding for design and engineering of a safer drinking water system. In Newmarket, voters committed to spend over $1.4 million to reduce pollutants in stormwater before it flows into Great Bay.

Despite trying times and competing needs, communities in our region continue to make concrete, collective decisions to protect what sustains us – not just on Earth Day – but all year ‘round.

Earth Month will bring its usual flurry of fairs, cleanups, talks, and gatherings. I’ll be there, and I hope you will, too. These moments matter. They connect us to our special region and to one another. But if we stop there – if Earth Day is a feeling rather than a commitment – we will fall short of what this moment demands.

We must show up where decisions are made. Attend town meetings. Vote on local investments that protect water, land, and public health. Call representatives when environmental protections are threatened – and keep calling. Support the organizations doing the unglamorous but essential, every-day work of monitoring, enforcing, collaborating and restoring.

It may not be the generational achievement of Artemis, but people coming together to express love and awe for our Blue Planet is inspiring, whether it’s far out in space or right here at home.

Melissa Paly is the Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper with Conservation Law Foundation. She advocates at the local, state and federal levels for programs, permits, and actions that will restore the health of the rivers and bays that make the Seven Rivers/Seacoast region such a spectacular place to live, work, and play. Follow the Waterkeeper on Facebook @SavetheGreatBay-PiscataquaEstuary, on Instagram @GreatBayPiscataquaWaterkeeper, or reach her at mpaly@clf.org. To learn more about ways to enjoy and protect the waterways in the region, visit https://7rivers2coast.org/

This article was originally published in Seacoast Online here.