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www.healthyindoors.com Vol. 5 No. 3, March/April 2017
Providing IAQ Professionals
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COVER STORY— March/April 2017
6
Earth Days
F
or the past several decades, the month of
April has witnessed an annual celebration of
what has been designated "Earth Day." All
around the world, millions of people take pause
and consider the environmental state of our planet
for a day or two.
There are thousands of events in commemora-
tion, aimed at raising public awareness and shap-
ing policy on important issues like ending pollution,
protecting the ecology, and moving towards a truly
sustainable existence. While these are all noble as-
pirations, as a global community, we are seemingly
light-years away from attaining them.
Planet Earth is effectively a spaceship, albeit on
a somewhat grand scale. Its 7-billion human pas-
sengers and other creatures have a finite stock of
provisions. The environmental systems, while mas-
sive and capable for literally hundreds of millions of
years, were not equipped to adequately handle the
waste and pollution that has increased exponentially
since the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s. Car-
bon-based fossil fuels that took eons to generate are
being expended at a reckless rate, and the resulting
increase of greenhouse gasses, like carbon dioxide
and methane, are taxing our ship's environmental
systems to the breaking point.
In the past century, mankind has more than dou-
bled in numbers, while over half the world's other
creatures have perished as our incessant quest for
economic growth has pilfered the planet's limited
resources. Our western cultures have emphasized
expansionism over global stewardship, much to the
detriment of our continued existence.
There are limits. Atmospheric systems can be
pushed to failure, resources can run out, and life,
as we have known it, can cease to exist. These are
indisputable facts. If we as a global community don't
change course, and do it soon, our expansionist
ways will trigger a planet "reset" that will effectively
erase our purported human progress.
We need Earth Day 265 days a year if we are to
continue. This is not the
time to value business
growth and economics
over environmental stew-
ardship and sustainabil-
ity, for without the latter,
there is no future.
earth day
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Earth Day
