Today is Earth Day and even though news about the environment tends to amplify the doom and gloom we're facing, activists say there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic.
In fact, decades of work and action to slow the climate crisis have prevented some of that doom and gloom and environmental disasters from happening.
Just think of how far we've come since the first Earth Day in 1970. As USA Today reported, "Climate-friendly advances that would have seemed impossible even 10 years ago are now commonplace. And three times in the past 50 years humanity has faced – and fixed – massive, man-made global environmental issues."
Secretary of State Antony Blinken pointed out that environmental diplomacy over the past five decades has contributed to repairing the hole in our ozone layer, reducing the pollution that causes acid rain, and protecting the populations of key fish species people rely on for food.
In the 70s, the US passed some of the most important laws to protect the environment, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Eater Act and Endangered Species Act.
In the 80s, curbside recycling went mainstream and ozone-depleting compounds known as chlorofluorocarbons were phased out. And in the 90s, we tackled the problem of acid rain by reducing sulfur dioxide emissions.
More recently, things like Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs, which replaced traditional incandescent light bulbs and are now being replaced by LED bulbs, brought environmentalism directly into homes as green technology that saves consumers money on utility bills.
With all of these changes and more, experts predict global carbon dioxide emissions will hit their peak by the end of the decade and then greenhouse gas emissions will go down, USA Today reported.
"The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it's unstoppable,” International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol said last year, per the report. "It's not a question of 'if', it's just a matter of 'how soon.'"
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