Work together for environment

Many people mark the birth of the environmental movement with the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970.

Actually, things got rolling three months earlier — not with liberal greenies waving signs, but with a Democratic Congress and a Republican president. On Jan. 1, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, a law that declared environmental protection a national policy and became the stepping stone for other major initiatives that followed in the same decade.

You’ve heard of them: The Environmental Protection Agency, environmental impact statements, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, to name a few.

And we’ve seen the result: A significant reduction in air pollution across the country, especially in major cities; cleaner water, from our waterways to our faucets; safer food products; more fuel-efficient vehicles; cherished wildlife like the bald eagle brought back from the brink. In short, a success story, borne out of a sustained effort to advance what Nixon called “a cause beyond party and beyond factions.”

How times have changed — and not for the better.

Today’s leading environmental problems are far more complex and difficult to solve (see climate change). The partisan divide has grown maddeningly vast, with once-basic assumptions like scientific consensus under attack. Protecting the environment is no longer seen as a common imperative, but a trade-off to be renegotiated. The Trump administration wants to expand fossil fuel use, starting with coal, while slashing the budgets of the EPA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other agencies on the front lines of monitoring and protecting our fragile environment.

It’s this disheartening turn of events that gave rise to today’s nationwide March for Science. The march, held in states across the country including Hawaii, is a rebuke to climate-change deniers and others who don’t believe in the political neutrality of scientific research — a political event for those who prefer to be above politics.

Hawaii, which lives by its natural beauty, should leave politics behind when it comes to addressing environmental protections. While we may disagree on the big issues — what should be done about a warming planet, for instance — we can, and should, let the scientific consensus guide our public policy and private actions.

Already, Hawaii residents invest heavily in protecting our tropical paradise. Tax incentives and public policy fuel our move toward 100 percent renewable energy by 2045. Recycling bins are standard government issue, not a eco-novelty. Your rising water bill reflects the high cost of treating our sewage to reach acceptable federal targets. We support efforts to save the world’s largest per-square-mile concentration of endangered species, even if it’s difficult and results are mixed. We rely on EPA grants to help implement and enforce national environmental laws.

We can’t eliminate our biggest problems by ourselves. But we can plan for them. For example, land-use laws that push development farther away from the shoreline can compensate for increasing coastal erosion caused by rising seas and the loss of coral reefs.

Moreover, simple individual actions can have a collectively larger effect.

Reducing your daily trash load can eventually lead to closing our landfill. It’s really not that hard. Trading the car for short trips by bicycle or walking can reduce the wear and tear on our poor, potholed roads, save gas money and improve your health. You know the rest: Use reusable water bottles instead of plastic disposable ones; go easy on the pesticides and weed-killers; fix leaky faucets, turn off the lights, and so on. If it helps, nag your family and friends to do the right thing.

We’ve accomplished a lot in the 47 years since the first Earth Day, thanks to a shared vision that crossed party lines. Let’s work toward that again.