Although I’m glad we celebrate it once a year, it rankles me that every day isn’t Earth Day. The Big Lie responsible for this absurdity is the belief that the Earth and its natural resources are here for our exploitation.

I got a firsthand look at this mindset as a young reporter for The Riverdale Press in New York some 40 years ago, when I wrote a story about the efforts of a local college professor and a group of environmentalists, including Pete Seeger, to clean up the then heavily-polluted Hudson River.

I learned that corporations up and down the river had decided it would be less expensive to dump their waste into the Hudson than to pay for the lawsuits they knew would result. That it was financially beneficial was all that mattered to them. I was dumbfounded, my eyes opened wide. Sadly, this way of thinking is still practiced by many businesses, large and small.

This Big Lie allows humanity to destroy our collective home in the name of greed and short term profit. It’s what urges us to drill, baby, drill, regardless of the danger that leaked petroleum poses to aquatic life; to build nuclear power plants regardless of the danger of leaked radioactivity; to remove all the precious metals from the Earth’s crust, as well as the oil and gas in its seams, built up over millions of years; to tear off entire mountain tops for the coal inside; to pollute the air and soil with toxic chemicals hazardous to all life.

I believe the natural resources of the Earth belong to the Earth, and serve important functions we may not even be aware of. We have no right to assume they are ours for the taking.

Earth Day reminds us that our collective duty is to nurture rather than exploit the Earth’s resources. But beyond being a day to pause and reflect on this commitment, it’s a day to realize we are all complicit through the choices we make every day, and to say Enough!

Thanks to the actions of a dedicated group of environmentalists, the Hudson River is now safer for swimming and fishing. The same can be done on a global level if we each determine through our daily actions to make every day Earth Day.