This Earth Day, we’re seeing multiple reproductions of the iconic ​“blue marble” photo of Earth from the banners of virtual celebrations to story after story about the state of our planet 50 years after the first Earth Day. Taken by astronauts on their 1972 Apollo 17 mission to the moon, it was the first photo ever taken of the entire, fully illuminated Earth and it had a profound and paradigm-shifting effect on the generation that saw it. As described by scientist Gregory Petsko in an essay published in Genome Biology, ​“The blue marble was an iconic image because it perfectly represented the human condition of living on an island in the universe, with all the frailty an island ecosystem is prey to.”

And it couldn’t have come at a better time. Taken just two years following the first Earth Day in 1970 and amidst an environmental awakening, the blue marble photo helped to cement the idea that this was our only planet and we had a responsibility to protect it. The period between 1970 and 1973 set the path for environmental gains following decades of neglect and outright assault on ecological and human health, resulting in burning rivers, dying species and poor human health conditions. In response, the US Environmental Protection Agency was created and the following national legislation was passed or significantly amended during this time: the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Air Act (1970); the Clean Water Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (1972); and the Endangered Species Act (1973).

Fast forward about 50 years, and here we find ourselves in unfortunately familiar territory to the years leading up to the environmental advances of the early 1970’s. The impacts of climate change – violent storms, flooding, sea level rise, heat waves, drought and wildfires – affect us with increasing, plague-like intensity each year. Decades of prior federal legislation to protect our environment – whether fuel economy standards, mercury pollution limits or participation in global climate accords, among others – is being eroded to an alarming degree. And suffering the most in our generation’s environmental catastrophe, the least privileged among us.

Then, against this backdrop comes COVID-19.

There’s something strangely appropriate about marking earth day while in the grips of a global pandemic. Perhaps this generation’s iconic photo is not one from outer space taken with a special camera, but rather the inner space of the human body as viewed through a microscope.

If we needed a reminder of what the blue marble photo of 1972 taught us, this tiny virus has delivered once again the message that we are but one species of millions on this planet and what we thought was firmly in our control is actually not.

This message, should we choose to listen, has come at a terrible cost of life, well-being and vitality, though.

The pandemic has effectively magnified the inequity and cruelty embedded in the poor choices of the past. Over the last 60 years or so, we’ve strategically located major roadways, power plants, waste facilities and other polluting infrastructure in low-income communities and communities of color, dividing neighborhoods, concentrating pollution and severely diminishing air quality and public health. And now we are practically helpless to watch as disproportionate levels of people in these very same communities suffer higher rates of infection and death from COVID.

In other words, this moment is teaching us, with alarming clarity, what we already knew: environmental health and human health are inextricably linked.

There is hope in that re-realization though. If that image of the virus can rally us to action let it push us towards a new stewardship for our planet in ways that advance health and right the wrongs of our inequitable past decisions.

Let us rapidly advance clean, renewable energy, dramatically reduce the number of miles we drive and fly with dirty fuels so that communities can have clean air to breath, while slowing the impacts of climate change. Let us also adapt our communities in ways that simultaneously protect them from the impacts of climate change as well as any future spikes in COVID, with investments in infrastructure and open space.

We can get this right.

50 years ago, people of all backgrounds came together to demand a better future. Today, the world has come to a pause, and there will be much motivation and resources to get us going again when the time is right. In the spirit of the first Earth Day 50 years ago, let us recognize our place in this fragile ecosystem and use our ingenuity to do the right thing. For our planet, for our most vulnerable, for future generations.