#ecohope

In the 1980s, scientists concluded that if current trends continued the ozone layer that protects our planet would be nearly destroyed in a couple of decades. 

What followed was a massive international effort to ban or severely reduce use of chlorofluorocarbons--and the reason you probably haven’t heard much about the hole in the ozone layer lately is because those efforts worked. Rather than seeing the ozone layer completely destroyed by 2050, it is instead well on its way to full recovery.

Sometimes it seems impossible that our world could severely limit or halt our reliance on fossil fuels when they are such an ingrained part of modern life. In the 1980s, when scientists started sounding the alarm about a hole in the ozone layer, it seemed similarly impossible that the world would come together and agree to limit their use of chlorofluorocarbons.

It was not easy, but they did it, and we are living in a better world as a direct result of all those who took action to protect our planet from the threat of impending environmental disaster.

The first Earth Day was held in 1970.

“At the time, rivers were on fire and birds were dying off en masse due to air and water pollution. Other big issues were at play, too: Vietnam was tearing people apart, and events like the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy and the Stonewall Riot had inflamed cultural divides and kept the public on edge. Despite that, 10 percent of the U.S. population took to the streets and protested the destruction of the environment on that first Earth Day.

[...] Change wasn’t immediate [...] But in the following months, [Denis Hayes] and other activists founded the Earth Day Network, targeted specific politicians and policies, and spearheaded a wide-ranging letter-writing campaign. Within the next few years, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act, and established the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a host of other protective measures.”

Highly, highly recommend this new video from Kurzegesagt.

Their videos are very well researched and they have done a great job here of laying out the progress we have made so far (it’s more than a lot of people think!) and where we need to go now.

There is lots to be hopeful for and, crucially, believing in a better future is necessary to creating that future.

“Recognition of the climate emergency is much more widespread than previously thought. We’ve also found that most people clearly want a strong and wide-raging policy response.”