This past Tuesday many people around the world celebrated Earth Day, which made me aware of a number of things taking place in our environment.

First was the welcome return of flowers and green leaves that exploded into life thanks to the unseasonable warm weather we have been experiencing.

Second was the very obvious pall of gray sky over the city as the warm air began to trap all of the pollution spewed out by Toronto and other cities down-wind from us.

Third was the fact that gasoline now costs roughly $1.20 a litre, rising just days before a strike by public transportation workers was narrowly averted.

Finally what impressed me the most was how many people made no effort to even symbolically change their polluting behaviour even for one day.

Worse, this lack of environmental awareness was applauded and encouraged by a small but noisy minority who went out of their way to mock the meaning and spirit of the day.

To hear them tell, people such as David Suzuki and Al Gore have been misleading us by using incorrect scientific data to elevate themselves into false authorities on the environment.

The most strident critics even hint of dark political motives behind their efforts, going so far as to suggest the modern environmental movement can be traced back to pro-conservation policies that originated in Nazi Germany.

As I have pointed out in this column before, such attacks against environmentalist are not new, nor are they particularly original.

When respected naturalist and writer Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, outlining the effects of the pesticide DDT on the environment, she was violently assailed by a great deal of personal derision directed at her.

Indeed many of today's critics have nurtured a myth that environmentalism was the creation of "one hysterical woman" whose bad science now pollutes public policy.

The truth is that concerns about the environment and the relationship of the human race to it are as old as civilization itself.

Weather, disease, crop failures and the cycle of the seasons were once the boundaries that defined the daily existence of the human race, no matter what part of the world one lived in.

Today, thanks in part to science and technology, we control and influence the environment in ways only dreamed of even 50 years ago.

Ironically, those very things that make our lives so much easier are bringing about conditions that are in many ways worse than what we have attempted to over-come.

The thing to remember during all of the debates and arguments that rage over this issue, it is a topic that, by its nature, we are all intimately involved with.

No matter what side of the debate you come down on, remember that you are a contributor to our current situation through every action you take.

Whether you believe in climate change or not, at least be aware of that environment we live in is the only one we have.