{"id":42379,"date":"2020-04-22T15:57:04","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T15:57:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=42379"},"modified":"2020-04-22T15:57:04","modified_gmt":"2020-04-22T15:57:04","slug":"happy-earth-day-if-only-we-could-cheer-it-this-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=42379","title":{"rendered":"Happy Earth Day &#8230; if only we could cheer it this year"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=EarthDay%20%23pandemic%20%23pollution%20%23deforestation%20%23climatechange%20%23globalwarming&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/EarthDay.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-14225\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/EarthDay-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/EarthDay-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/EarthDay-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/EarthDay.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I have been fond of wishing everyone a Happy Earth Day, which I have done repeatedly on this blog.<\/p>\n<p>This year it&#8217;s different. It&#8217;s vastly different, in fact. We acknowledge the 50th anniversary of Earth Day under a severe, foreboding and ominous cloud brought to our good Earth by the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n<p>Fifty years ago we began setting aside a day to celebrate the only planet we have. Earth is home. That&#8217;s it. We have to care for it. President Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, vowing to exert greater emphasis on ways to protect our precious Earth.<\/p>\n<p>Here we are today. Our worldwide economy has effectively been shut down by the viral infection that has killed hundreds of thousands of human beings.<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;good news,&#8221; if you want to call it such, is that our air has gotten much cleaner as we have driven far less. We have nowhere to go. Our motor vehicles are parked.<\/p>\n<p>OK, so the air is cleaner. We still have water pollution issues. We have deforestation that leads to global warming and climate change. We&#8217;re still throwing too much trash into landfills. We still are using too much fossil fuel that also spews pollution into the air.<\/p>\n<p>Our minds and hearts, at the moment, are directed at fighting the pandemic. I am all for that effort, to be sure. I do not want to rush into a return to &#8220;normal living&#8221; while the virus is still infecting and killing human beings.<\/p>\n<p>I do want to wish everyone once more a Happy Earth Day, although I understand completely that our attention is being diverted to more immediately urgent matters.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?hashtags=EarthDay%20%23pandemic%20%23pollution%20%23deforestation%20%23climatechange%20%23globalwarming&#038;via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have been fond of wishing everyone a Happy Earth Day, which I have done repeatedly on this blog. This year it&#8217;s different. It&#8217;s vastly different, in fact. We acknowledge the 50th anniversary of Earth Day under a severe, foreboding and ominous cloud brought to our good Earth by the coronavirus pandemic. Fifty years ago &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=42379\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Happy Earth Day &#8230; if only we could cheer it this year<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[9236,1320,1498,9261,3662],"class_list":["post-42379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environmental-news","tag-coronavirus","tag-deforestation","tag-earth-day","tag-pandemic","tag-pollution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42380,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42379\/revisions\/42380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}