With the 47th anniversary of Earth Day just around the corner on April 22, it seems ironically sad that laws regulating emissions rules, limits on methane leaks, and regulations to fossil fuel industries were loosened and put up for review late last month by the Trump administration.

As gas-hogging cars crowded the roads in 1970, and industrial factories poured pollution into the air with no restraint, the first Earth Day began raising awareness to the decline of the environment and educating Americans as to the dangers of continued ignorance of the human impact on our one and only planet. That public action woke up the government and the Environmental Protection Agency was created, and Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts were enacted to work toward a healthy and conscientious environment. The realization that many of our resources were finite, and that people had the ability to not only further promote, but even roll back, dangerous environmental policies and attitudes was a catalyst to a better America.

Dialing back progress now will put our intimately entangled ecosystem at risk.

Many states, including our own, have supported goals of a clean environment and if recent comments from our governor, Senator Chris Murphy, and Representative Elizabeth Esty are to be believed, will continue to do so, regardless of reckless legislation signed off at the national level.

Poor air quality contributes to the illness and deaths of hundreds of people each year in our state alone. Pretending that pollution does not affect personal health, or refusing to accept the consensus of top scientists worldwide who recognize that climate change will adversely affect not-so-future generations unless a global effort is successful in slowing down the pollutants spewed into the atmosphere, is folly.

We must not become known as the country that does not care. Environmentally unfriendly legislation - based on the skewed idea of job creation in dying industries and that domestic energy production should encourage fossil fuel development while downplaying the demand for renewable energy production - is a slight to public health everywhere.

Newtown will join the global Earth Day celebration of more than one billion people on April 22. Environmentally friendly activities, foods, and educational materials to help every individual feel that he or she can make a change will be available at the Earth Day event at Newtown Middle School next Saturday.

Or head to Washington, DC, on Earth Day, where a rally and teach-in is part of the March for Science on the National Mall (abrams@earthday.org).

The activist inclined can also join the Newtown Forward Climate Change Subcommittee in its march against climate change in Washington, DC, on April 29 (letskedaddle.com, password 645d615bb10).

Choose to join the voices that resonate across multiple nations, saying that climate change does matter. Choose to prove that 50 years of activism for a clean and safe environment will not be forgotten at the grassroots level - where so much change begins.

Demand the essentials for every human being: clean air, clean water, and a prosperous future built on reality.