As I sit at my computer on this Earth Day, April 22, 2023, I am reminiscing about earlier Earth Days, when it seemed to me that everyone in the United States was ready to speak out and take action to prevent further depletion of natural resources and clean up land and waterways that had been polluted for two hundred years by indiscriminate disposal of industrial waste and poor land management methods. As I type these words, I realize how naïve they sound. We are just beginning to repair the damage we have caused to the environment.

The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 has grown into an international effort to combat global warming, increase the production and use of clean energy, and educate the world’s citizens about sustainable living.

Gaylord Nelson, a United States senator from Wisconsin and an early environmentalist, founded the Earth Day movement, which he envisioned as a nationwide “teach-in” to educate Americans about the environmental dangers of the time: air and water...