COMMENCING THE UN-ESTRANGEMENT

By MICHAEL PERKINS

Earth Day, 2026

THE FIRST RUSTLINGS OF THE AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALIST MOVEMENT, which, by the end of the 1960’s, had peaked with the first Earth Day, served as a kind of eco-kindergarten for many who had never been properly informed about the growing estrangement between humans and the planet they inhabit. In simpler terms, we simply had never known how little we knew: we had no automatic mental link between our causes and the world’s effects. We weren’t stupid; we were ignorant. And, for a time, that newly-imported knowledge translated directly into action. Cleanups. Laws. Modifications of our basic behaviors. And, incredibly, the feeling that our governments had entered into a kind of partnership with us on the planet’s behalf.

What a difference fifty-five years can make.

As a photographer, as well as a plain old human being, I can certainly attest that many of the pro-earth crusades we undertook in 1970 have borne fruit. We have trained ourselves to a certain higher level of mindfulness. We have demanded, in some cases, that those we vote into office make themselves accountable to the health of the planet. And several generations of photographers have exhaustively and dutifully documented those changes.

And yet, in some cases, we are worse off than in the days when even Richard Nixon championed the formation of the EPA. Our current government is not only non-supportive of progressive remedies for climate change; they have deliberately worked to thwart protective measures designed to forestall absolute atmospheric Armageddon. Science is sniffed at and disdained; solid evidence of the world’s impending eco-collapse is regarded as hoaxes or fairy tales, while regulation that would protect us from billionaire despoilers is shredded, with short-term profit as the only alibi.

Photographers have a duty, no less than print journalists, to counter lies with visual fact; to say the uncomfortable, to show that the woods are on fire; to remind us that, unlike 1970, we no longer even have the excuse of ignorance to justify our inaction. Just as poverty relief, health initiatives and peace crusades have variously been “sold” via images in ages past, the welfare of the planet must become The Urgent Message Of The Age, and now. Pictures like the one up top, which I was privileged to make of the central California coastline last year, must not become mere souvenirs of a happier time. We must not only fight, but constantly remind ourselves of what we’re fighting for. Like Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman and our other great national poets, we must be prophets for our own time. We must visually measure the distance between us and nature, the better to help close that gap. Let the great un-estrangement commence.