On this 54th Anniversary of America's first Earth Day celebration, it is a time to reflect on how we moved from a consensus on the urgent need for environmental protection across the country to woefully underestimating the need for action about climate change.

A recent study shows that most Europeans and Americans acknowledge that the climate is warming and that a warming planet will likely hurt humankind. At the same time, there is a distortion of the scientific consensus about the data, which leads to a tendency among the public to underestimate the urgency of the situation. This misunderstanding comes from an inaccurate belief that scientists do not agree about the human-caused nature of the crisis. Fossil fuel industry advocates and media outlets often characterize the scientific debate as mixed when the consensus among scientists is well above 97%.

Let's face it. There is overwhelming scientific agreement, and many members of the public agree.

Humans also tend to have "Earth blindness," that is, we do not appreciate the life support systems that the natural environment provides us with daily. This explains, in part, why people in democratic societies with the freedom to demonstrate are not engaging in large-scale protests. It also seems that more visible and immediate events, such as Covid-19 and conflicts and war, push the long-range danger aside. What a difference from the 1970s—when the environmental movement was on par with student protests in many countries, the anti-war protests, and fighting for women's rights in the United States and other countries!