Earth Day 2025

While in high school, Earth Day served a pressing purpose. NASA astronaut Bill Anders had taken the famous Earthrise photograph on Dec. 24, 1968, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, describing the impact of use of the pesticide DDT, was published in 1962, and there were no legal or regulatory mechanisms to protect our environment. Teenage me was inspired to take action and we did the best we knew how to support the effort. Mostly that meant selling Earth Day buttons like the one in the photograph to raise funds.

Word from Washington, D.C. is the president is planning to note Earth Day 2025 by signing executive orders that would strip some environmental nonprofits of their tax-exempt status, setting up a possible Earth Day strike against organizations seen as standing in the way of the president’s push for more domestic oil, gas and coal production, according to Bloomberg News. How the worm has turned.

The trouble is that to address the climate crisis, governments must be involved. While this administration is temporary, the harms from doing little or nothing for the remaining time could do permanent harm. That is to say, Earth will be fine. It’s the people who live on it who are in harm’s way.

Now is the time to find like minded people who support the science behind climate change and band together to do something. What is possible is an open question.

Editor’s note: The president signing these executive orders did not make news today.