The environment has become a polarizing issue in recent years, but as honorary co-chairs of the “Year of the Environment” launching Monday on Earth Day, we are hoping to help make it a bipartisan cause again.
The initiative, aimed at commemorating a half-century of bipartisan environmental progress, will include 12 months of celebrations, special events and public lectures leading up to next year’s 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, brainchild of the late Wisconsin senator and governor, Democrat Gaylord Nelson.
It’s kicking off at the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which hosts an annual Earth Day Conference conducted in the spirit of the original 1970 “teach-in.” The event is called Imagine and Adapt: Possibilities in a Changing World.
We urge Americans to become what the Nelson Institute calls “New Environmental Citizens” — people who understand that the environment is at work all around us, including (and especially) in cities. The environment is not some abstract concept, but something that connects and unites us all. The environment is embedded in our everyday lives, whether it’s the food we eat, water we drink, air we breathe, or communities where we live.