Communities across Nassau County will mark Earth Day Thursday, April 26, with educational, entertainment, and clean-up events as the country faces questions over how to handle the environment 55 years after the first celebrations.
More than a dozen organizations from across the Town of North Hempstead are partnering with the Port Washington Public Library to present an Earth Day Concert at Sunset Park from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in Port Washington.
Other organizations will also host community cleanups, such as the Coalition to Save Hempstead Harbor at Scudder’s Pond in Sea Cliff at 9 a.m. and the South Shore Conservation Society at the Brookside Preserve in Freeport at 10 a.m..
In Roslyn Harbor, the Nassau County Museum of Art will also host an Earth Day Celebration event, featuring activities such as a nature photography scavenger hunt and watching artist demonstrations along the nature trails from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
At the Port Washington Earth Day Concert, students from the local music organization Back to Rock will perform, and environmental organizations, such as Grassroots Environmental Education, will host informational tables and activities.
Grassroots Environmental Education will plant a native linden tree and offer educational activities, such as identifying the various tree species across Sunset Park.
Patti Wood, the founder and executive director of Grassroots Environmental Education, said the world is at a pivotal moment in deciding whether to transition to renewable energy or continue emitting carbon, which contributes to climate change.
“As each Earth Day passes, the Earth itself is unfortunately degrading pretty rapidly because of human activities on this planet,” Wood said.
Over 20 million people participated in marches, cleanups, and teach-ins during the first Earth Day in 1970, which Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson and other environmental activists spearheaded. President Richard Nixon would create the Environmental Protection Agency months after these demonstrations.
This Earth Day also comes as many Long Islanders question government action on environmental policy, with dozens protesting outside an event where Lee Zeldin, the former congressman from Suffolk County and current head of the Environmental Protection Agency, spoke on April 10.
At the event, Zeldin said the agency’s mission is nonpartisan and aims to achieve clean air, land, and water, while also bringing automotive manufacturing jobs back to the country.
Zeldin’s boss, President Donald Trump, has aired similar talking points about bringing automotive jobs back into the country along with increasing fossil fuel production when discussing environmental policy. Trump also signed an executive order on his first day in office that withdrew the nation from the Paris Climate Agreement.
And this past week, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman hosted press conferences condemning an offshore wind farm project.
The controversial Empire Wind 1 project, located off the south shore of Long Island, was later ordered to stop construction by U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on April 16.
Despite debates on the national level about how to handle environmental policy, environmentalists like Wood said individuals can start making positive contributions to the environment by considering how their actions impact the world around them, such as reconsidering whether to drink from a one-use plastic bottle.
“The important thing is that we are there doing something that’s not on a phone,” Wood said. “This is planting a tree, and…one of the few things that humanity can do is plant a tree.”
