Day of the Frontier

Happy Earth Day, or as the Universal Solar Calendar calls it, Day of the Frontier. For some inexplicable reason I still don't fully understand, on the original Earth Day in 1970 I was invited to sail on Pete Seeger's Hudson River sloop, Clearwater. If I recall correctly, we only sailed a short distance - barely left the dock - but we were allowed to participate in some "experiments" (mostly sampling and testing river water) and listened to a few speeches and lectures by Clearwater crew (I think Seeger himself was down in D.C. that day). Did it have an effect on me? I can't say, but I did eventually settle into a career of environmental consulting, and either personally collected or directed literally thousands of water samples.

My formative experience was probably a year earlier, though, when three friends and I took a cross-country camping trip from New York to Texas, and then back along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts. Hiking in forests almost every day, swimming in the Mississippi, catching turtles and lizards and snakes. We watched the first moon landing from a bayou campsite in Louisiana on a small battery-powered, b&w tv. Maybe telling my teachers about that experience got me nominated for the Clearwater trip the next year, but I don't know - I was just a kid. Things happen and you don't ask why.

In related news, the NY Times reports that last year, global levels of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide rose to 419 parts per million, the highest annual average yet recorded and around 50 percent more than before the Industrial Revolution (1750). In addition to carbon dioxide, the levels of other potent greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide are also on the rise, which further contribute to warming. 

Also, EPA recently allocated over $125 million from Biden’s Investing in America agenda for Georgia drinking water and clean-water infrastructure upgrades. One of the priorities will be to remove lead pipes from drinking water distribution systems. The EPA has also allocated $1.5 million to Dalton, Georgia's public utilities to conduct pilot projects to test the effectiveness of various PFAS removal and destruction technologies.