Earth Day: Anybody Celebrating?

"With reduced pressure from powerful political leaders, fossil fuel giants…have paused, delayed, or retracted their climate commitments, increasingly pushing the world towards a dangerous future.”

Marina Romanella, et al., The 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: climate action offers a lifeline, Lancet, December 13, 2025

“The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.”

Rachel Carson, American marine biologist, writer, conservationist, and environmentalist

Today is Earth Day, a global event dedicated to environmental protection and sustainability. Each year, this day serves as a reminder of all that our planet does for us and all we can do to protect it. In today’s post, I provide an overview of the current administration’s assaults on some of our environmental protection laws—laws aimed to protect human health and the environment. Notwithstanding that gloomy news, I then give my opinion on why we should all be celebrating this, the 56^th Earth Day.

A recap on climate change (global warming). Climate change refers to long-term shifts in global or regional temperature and weather patterns, driven largely by human activities— specifically the burning of fossil fuel—which increase heat by trapping greenhouse gas emissions. According the World Health Organization, climate change ranks among the greatest global health threats of the 21^st century. (Thomas, J.A., “Doctors Step Up Against the Climate Health Emergency,” Medscape, August 13, 2025). It “fosters the spread of infectious diseases, heightens food insecurity, worsens mental health and increases the vulnerability of populations to floods, droughts and landslides.”

What is Earth Day? The first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970. Approximately 20 million Americans—about 10% of the U.S. population at the time—participated, making it one of the largest civic demonstrations in U.S. history. (For comparison, it is estimated that over 8 million people participated in the March 28, 2026 “No Kings” protests.) It was a landmark event in the environmental movement and is widely credited with launching environmental activism in the U.S. and around the world.  

The success of that first Earth Day inspired globalization of the movement. It laid the foundation for the modern sustainability movement and many ongoing climate change initiatives. The first Earth Day successfully united Republicans and Democrats, as well as urban and rural communities, around environmental protection. By 1990, Earth Day had expanded to 140 countries and today is celebrated annually on April 22 worldwide.

Uniting for the health of all of us. In his 1970 State of the Union address, President Richard Nixon stated that Americans were being “suffocated by smog, poisoned by water” and proclaimed that clean air and water should “be the birthright of every American.” (Gaffney, A.W., et al., “The Dismantling of Environmental Protections—A Grave Threat to America’s Health,” New England Journal of Medicine, April 16, 2026). At Nixon’s urging, and with bipartisan support, Congress established the Environmental Protection Act (EPA) and passed the Clean Air Act (CAA).

The EPA and CAA have produced amazing results. “Air-quality up grades mandated by that act and enforced by the EPA are among the most effective health interventions of the past half-century, having reduced air pollution by 75% in the United States and saved at least 200,000 lives per year.”

Moving in the wrong direction. The U.S. is the world’s largest single historical contributor to climate change. (Romanello, M., et al., “The 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: climate change action offers a lifeline,” The Lancet, December 11-13, 2025). Nonetheless, the Trump administration has “dismantled world-leading climate research and key climate and environmental agencies, and pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement.”

During his first term in office, Mr. Trump rescinded nearly 100 environmental and occupational protections, including air-quality safeguards. The second Trump administration’s actions have been even more aggressive and could cause greater harm. As Lee Zedlin, administrator of the EPA, said these changes will drive “a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” They include, but are not limited to:

• loosening standards for particle matter pollution

• loosening standards for oil and gas producers

• repealing rules restricting greenhouse gas emissions and hazardous pollutants from power plants

• ending subsidies for clean-energy production under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act

• abandoning 2024 rule requiring closer monitoring of emissions of methane

• weakening standards for tailpipe emissions for cars and trucks; and

• allowing greater wastewater discharges from oil and gas production.

(Gaffney, A.W., et al., “The Dismantling of Environmental Protections—A Grave Threat to America’s Health,” New England Journal of Medicine, April 16, 2026).

Mr. Zedlin ignores the fact that climate change is a science, not a religion. And the science “indicates that [the administration’s] actions will accelerate climate change, pollute America’s air and water, and cause disease and premature death.”

 Rescission of climate change initiatives in the U.S.; it’s all about the money. I am naïve; my wife and family will attest to this fact. I always look for the good in people and am shocked when I learn that sometimes it’s just about the money.

For example, about 12 years ago, I realized that climate change was the single biggest threat to human health worldwide. I even spoke on the issue to well-informed community members conceding that while I was passionate about the issue, I had come late to understanding its importance. I remember being startled by a question from a woman in one audience asking whether my delayed enlightenment regarding the urgency of climate change could by explained, in part, by the clever coverup by the fossil fuel industry, the main culprits of climate change. I thought no…that that was a conspiracy theory. I soon realized, however, how right she was.

In the past, the fossil fuel industry (coal, oil, and gas) had been relatively subtle in its dealing with the government. That approach seems to have changed seismically under the current administration.

In 2024, Mr. Trump is said to have asked oil and gas executives to raise $1 billion for his campaign and “told them he’d grant their policy wish list if he won.” (Bacskal, O., “Fossil Fuel Industry Donors See Major Returns in Trump’s Policies,”  www.brennancenter.org, September 15, 2025). And months after Mr. Trump’s victory, oil and gas moguls have continued to pump money into his political coffers. This administration’s “embrace of the oil and gas industry’s agenda provides another example of how wealthy special interests shape policies.” It’s no wonder that America has relinquished its decades-long scientific leadership in many areas of environmental health.

Trump certainly isn’t the first president to use the office in this way. But it does offer a “stark example of how wealthy interests are shaping policies that affect the lives of all Americans.” 

What is there to celebrate on this, the 56^th Earth Day? One cannot let the acts and policies of the present administration distract from the many accomplishments of ethical, political, and scientific leaders in the field of climate change—accomplishments that we all should celebrate on Earth Day.

For example, Bill Gates, a leader in the field of climate change, recently pointed out that in the past 10 years, projected greenhouse gas emissions have been cut by more than 40%. (Gates, B., “Three tough truths about climate, What I want everyone at COP30 to know,” Gates Notes, October 29, 2025). In addition,  he makes a strong case for why continued innovations are likely to occur, all leading to improvements of human health. As Mr. Gates said: “We need to keep backing the breakthroughs that will help the world reach zero emission. But we can’t cut funding for health and development—programs that help people stay resilient in the face of climate change—to do it. It’s time to put human welfare at the center of our climate change strategies which includes reducing the Green Premium to zero and improving agriculture and health in poor countries.

And I am pleased to see that physicians and many other health professionals are stepping up to the plate and addressing the climate health emergency. The authors of the article “The Dismantling of Environmental Protections—A Grave Threat to America’s Health” wrote: “Unless we put a human face on the tragic consequences of these environmental rollbacks, the connection between these seemingly abstract policy changes and the real health harms they cause my remain invisible…[T]he effect of ongoing environmental rollbacks could be immense and long-lasting—extending over years and even generations.”

The authors ended their article with a call to action writing, “We health professionals must call urgent attention to this silent but deadly assault on Americans’ health, work with broad coalitions to halt it, and ultimately rebuild the agencies, protections and shared sense of trust and responsibility that have given us clean air and water and enabled us and our children to live longer and healthier lives.”

On this Earth Day, I celebrate these and all of the other health care providers around the world who have dedicated and are dedicating their lives to serving humanity through their commitment to fostering the health of our planet.