Editor,

It hit the news last week that there is only one remaining male northern white rhinoceros left in the world. A population that numbered more than 2,000 in 1960 is now down to exactly five. Hippy environmentalists of the 1960s could afford the luxury of sentimentalism toward rhinos and sunshine and trees, but today’s more urgent environmentalism is rooted in the practical and mature recognition that we’re simply running out of time. Meeting our shared responsibility toward other people means proceeding much more lightly on the planet than we have been.

Americans first celebrated Earth Day in 1970 after media coverage of a Cuyahoga River fire focused attention on factory dumping of toxic chemicals. The event helped usher in a wave of state and federal legislation such as the Clean Water Act and the creation of the Environmental Protection Administration. These institutions successfully attacked some of America’s worst pollution, and we should be grateful that our grandparents acted strongly to protect us in these ways.

Forward 45 years. The human population has roughly doubled and will increase another 400 in the few minutes you spend reading this. The footprint of each individual has also increased as standards of living rise worldwide.

The impacts of today’s 7.3 billion people add up unremittingly, enough that they now match the planet’s capacity to absorb them. The journal “Science” described the situation in a January paper that assessed that we have exceeded the Earth’s capacity for sustainable living in four of nine important measures, including extinction rate, nitrogen and phosphorous loads on the ocean, deforestation, and atmospheric carbon dioxide level.

As a result, today’s world is one with alarm bells going off everywhere. Ocean acidification, dead zones, climate change, groundwater contamination, declining biodiversity: These are preventable problems. Today’s environmentalist answers the alarm bells because ignoring them means unquestionably reducing the quality of life for our next generation, and that’s not our way.

Today’s environmentalist acknowledges that we will choose between a world with rhinos and a world without. Because our way is to leave things better for the next generation, not worse, I ask you to join me in refusing to pass down a planet in peril. Refuse to ask your kids and grandkids to adapt to a climate that no humans have ever lived in. Take a stand against the carbon pollution that causes ocean acidification. Refuse to accede to irreversible extinctions.

Earth Day: It’s not really about the Earth.

Bob Hallahan

Citizens’ Climate Lobby, Whidbey Island