Earth Day, Babyboomers and Global Warming

Earth Day, 1970. To mark the event, a local radio station holds a writing contest, calling it the “Pollution Solution” contest. What can be done to clean up the environment, and especially the air?

I am in junior high school. On my bedroom wall is a chilling poster. A skeleton is driving a bulldozer, under which he is crushing animals, plants, rivers, flowers. Behind him is “progress” depicted as a smoky morass of skyscrapers, bridges and flaming factories the resemble the refineries along the turnpike in New Jersey, the state where I live. I am inspired to write something, anything, to voice my concern. The result is a poem that the judges pick for “special honors” because of my age, and the fact that it is more of a dire warning than a suggestion of actual solutions. I am invited to read the poem on the air, and a poster of it is hung in my school. The only other entry read on the air is the winning essay, which offers this surprising solution to our ecological problems – population control.

Earth Day, 1990. The same local radio station hosts a show looking back on what has changed since the first Earth Day. I’m a call-in guest on the show and asked if I have seen any positive improvements in twenty years. I cite the emission regulations for cars, the spreading recycling programs initiated in New Jersey and other states, even the ban on harmful aerosols. Smog, once the watchword of the environmental set, seems well on its way to being a thing of the past. And Rachel Carson’s predictions about a “Silent Spring” had not come to pass, thanks to the multitude of chemicals and pesticides that had been banned. In general, I feel optimistic. In my understanding of environmental issues, there is no talk of global climate changes or holes in the ozone layer.

Earth Day, 2007. The spectre of Global Warming now hangs over our heads. In a recent article in the Rutgers Daily Targum, writer Patrick McKnight goes so far as to blame it on the babyboomer generation – that somehow everyone born between 1945 and 1965 is impeding solutions to this problem. He states, “But now, at a time when we need similar social change more than ever, it is the baby boom generation in power who are stifling our progress.” Yet, who has garnered the most attention about this subject, bringing discussion of it to dinner tables around the nation? Babyboomer Al Gore. And I would say with some certainty, that it is not just those identified as Gen X or Gen Y who are paying close attention to this and are doing what they can to change things. In fact, I would guess that plenty of Gen X and Gen Y people, along with Babyboomers and beyond are out there driving gas guzzlers and tossing the spent batteries from all their electronic gadgets into landfills. Yes, there is a culture of rampant comsumerism in today’s United States – but it involves all ages, all generations – everyone. Putting the brakes on our appetite for oil, electricity, gas and other resources is the responsibility of all. Babyboomers felt as if their parents left them a polluted, tainted world, and out of that came much positive work and change. The job is not done, the job may never be done. The one thing that will impede progress however, is wasting time pointing fingers.