With our power combined, they pollute

 - by Dustin Woods
  Visionary Columnist

Happy Earth Day! As a gay man who doesn’t have children, or a serious plan to adopt any, I don’t have what one would typically think of as a vested interest in the future of the planet remaining a habitable one for humanity.

However, it seems as though our species is dead set on degrading our environment through a myriad of ways of polluting it. We seem inexorably bound to transform our planet in ways unseen for eons and never before encountered by the environment. Atmospheric carbon concentration, radioactive waste, short-term and “forever” chemical contamination, micro and macro plastic adulteration, these are just a few of the ways we defile our home, the good Earth upon which we all live.

It is important for us as individuals to remember our place in the broader system of pollution, which we are only a small part of. Most pollution comes from governments and businesses.

Yes, we, as citizens, benefit from government, and as consumers, we purchase from these businesses. Still, in many instances, we aren’t given options to purchase necessities like utilities, or there is no non-polluting option available. Even when there is a non-polluting option for a product, there are often steep financial costs associated with its purchase compared to other products.

Pollution is systemic. Hell, it often feels endemic. But we shouldn’t treat it as though it’s a personal failing we perpetuate in our communities; rather, it is an outcome of the laziness of pure profit-seekers who failed to find a cleaner way to achieve their goals.

Today, technology exists that could scrub carbon out of the air and microplastics out of water, capture them, and prevent them from entering the environment again. What doesn’t exist today is the give a damn actually to do it. Other projects have taken priority over the environment that supports us.

As I write this, our “priority” for a sense of safety is costing us billions of dollars a day as we bomb yet another country in our long list of potential enemies of the state, our elected leaders curate. The choice to spend political capital, human lives, and the wealth of the American people on war instead of instituting scientifically proven policies that actually save lives is a choice. It seems that killing the citizens of other countries is more important to those in control of our government at this time than actually addressing the pollution that is proven to be killing Americans today. 

Consider what has happened at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This agency, whose name seems to imply it is tasked with protection, appears intent on rolling back any prior decision in favor of ones that lower the standard of protection. The American Lung Association points out that the EPA has rolled back standards for pollutants associated with asthma, lung disease, and even heart attacks. But that’s okay for the party that controls every branch of the government, because they only care about deregulation for the benefit of profit.  

This Earth Day, I really want my readers to embrace their love of nature and to remember that our greatest impact on addressing the issues that need changing is by voting out every elected Republican (full stop), and the corporatist Democrats who don’t commit to modern-day pollution mitigation legislation.

The Gayly online. 4/22/26 @ 4:03 p.m. CST.