All of us wake up each morning to a new day. Right there, every sunrise, lie two things to be both grateful and optimistic about. We’re still of this world and maybe today’s newness will avail us of unprecedented or unforeseen opportunities for personal and communal betterment. Not a bad way to welcome what a once popular truism described as “the first day of the rest of your life.”

The thing about cliches is that they’re indeed revelations long acknowledged but largely ignored. These days, however, so much of everyday life in mainstream America has become an accepted cliché, a hackneyed going-through-the-motions existence awaiting someone or something to take charge and restore what was a fundamental belief that there were no limits to our united potential.

“Make America Great Again” says it all. “America, Love It Or Leave It” has run up against the reality check that our once undoubted greatness is perceived as past and holds less and less promise of any immediate return. “America, Keep Out” is a far more apt sentiment held by those still so fearful of the progressive change of possible actual greatness.

The shallow obsessiveness of “What’s Trending” hardly gives one hope as to where we’re collectively headed. More and more we’re losing ourselves in an addiction to the transitory and tribal rather than the rootedness of commonality and interdependence.

Thinking out loud, I casually asked a well-grounded friend to list some of the things that still make America great and instill optimism for a hopeful future. No ready response was forthcoming. Soliciting a positive worldview went similarly.

Given all the 24-7 media-driven sensationalized bleakness and fear mongering it’s understandable that gratefulness and optimism are endangered species. The Me Generation has generated a Generation Me. Social media’s become a.k.a. the anti-social media. Facebook takes a mea culpa while a ubiquitous virtual reality further undermines actual physical experience of nature. The environmental impact of e-communication conveniently escapes indictment by those ironically embracing its convenience in combating climate change. Its unsustainable exponential energy demand is the forest that can’t be seen for the trees cut down for a hydro, wind and solar “sustainable energy” myth.

Recently, the question was put to me as to why I still involve myself in the pursuit of progressive change, and remain at all positive, when I see such little evidence for hope regarding the future of this beleaguered planet. That very legitimate query had been prompted by yet another of my indelicate observations that the environmental tipping point of our planetary demise has already passed.

My best philosophical reply reasoned that facing inevitable extinction is the lot of every individual that’s living. The “End” is inevitable. The point is how one chooses to face it. Foremost, one must overcome the false respite of denial.

That’s the most laughable part of our human hubris, that we continue to calmly contextualize our destruction of the planet. Over and over, science quantifies how much damage we do and then we just go on and on repeating the same addictive behavior. We can’t give up doing bad things or stop our escapist rationalization that some distant different human conduct will eventually provide our eventual absolution.

The crux of the matter is that mankind is mindlessly unkind to this wondrous world that most of us wonder so very little about, being more and more enthralled with a world of supposed technological advancement. Unlike all other living things, modern humankind isn’t a sustainable entity in a world designed for cohabitation and ecological balance. The natural world exhibits cruelty, but only humans force themselves beyond their natural habitat, overcoming all obstacles in their insistence to unsuitably impose their presence willfully and destructively. Rather than wisely finding our optimum place within nature’s once infinite accommodation, we persist in a belief that our species exceptionalism grants us dominion over, rather than stewardship of, what we claim, even religiously justify, as our special entitlement.

Despite all that, I’m nonetheless inexplicably more optimistic than ever that humanity just might get its dysfunctional act together in the final scenes, before the closing soundtrack is played and production credits are scrolled.

I’m writing this on the 48th celebration of Earth Day. Forty-eight years of significant yet overwhelmingly inadequate accomplishment in averting an environmental endgame where nobody wins. Today, Google Doodle fleetingly gives its full attention. Maine’s congressional delegation gives the usual scant mixed nod. Tomorrow, both will move on to more pressing constituent/consumer concerns. America’s planetary conscience will renew its nap.

I’ve adhered to environmental best practices as best I can for my entire adult life yet I still participate in environmental harm. Relying on voluntary individual environmental purity practices will never save this beautifully innocent planet. That righteously well meant guilt trip will never arrive at its intended goal. Blame and change needs to be shouldered where it belongs. Business’s must be held responsible for the damage caused by their products and services. Only a legally imposed bottom line will succeed in mitigating our collateral self-destruction from our increasing environmental alienation’s disregard.

Earth Day awareness is imperative every day.

Gary Anderson lives in Bath.