Earth Day

I hope those stunning photographs that the Artemis II astronauts sent back of Earth remind us of the stakes as we celebrate Earth Day. We’re a radiant, fragile oasis of life against the blackness of interstellar space.

Metropolitan areas tend to be significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas because of human activities, infrastructure, and the lack of vegetation. Asphalt, concrete, and dark rooftops absorb sunlight during the day and slowly release it at night. This raises temperatures by 1 to as much as 7 degrees during the day and 2-5 degrees at night. This is known as the urban heat island effect.

The Albany County city of Cohoes marked Earth Day with a tree planting.

Just as I was about to declare Miller Lite the beer that litterers were most tossing from moving cars in my annual totally subjective Earth Day survey of trash deposited on our road, I happened to look down and got a shock.

April 22nd is “Earth Day,” the global celebration of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. History shows that Earth Day was not intended to be about personal actions – planting a tree or recycling one’s garbage, although both are good ideas. Instead, the original Earth Day was a reaction to the enormous environmental damage done by the essentially unregulated discharging of pollution into the nation’s airways and waterways.

The town of Amherst, Massachusetts, put on an annual festival Saturday devoted to promoting sustainability, including local causes.

Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan says the city is making progress in transitioning to renewable energy sources and reducing emissions, with a focus on addressing climate change.

Once a year Maureen Dowd relinquishes her New York Times column to her conservative Republican brother. I find his take on things annoying but I’m really not qualified to pass judgment since I usually drop out after the first couple of paragraphs.

Global warming is one of the greatest dangers mankind faces today. Even as temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and natural disasters escalate, our current environmental crisis feels difficult to predict and understand. But climate change and its effects on us are not new. In a bold narrative that spans centuries and continents, Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing of history. Frankopan's new book is "The Earth Transformed: An Untold History."

Tours part of Earth Day celebration in Springfield's Indian Orchard neighborhood