On the first Earth Day, in April 1970, Senator Edmund Muskie called for “a total strategy to protect the total environment.” We have had time to pull this off — nearly a half century after Muskie’s clarion call — but have failed. Yes, gains in environmental quality have happened, but as time has passed, we have witnessed the emergence of global level, existential threats. The human race is pushing on or through what the Stockholm Resilience Center has called “planetary boundaries.” The old approaches have failed. But what would a new paradigm, built on lessons learned, look like?
Copyright ©2019, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington D.C. www.eli.org. Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, January-February.