larsen nichols- 7 things we've learned since the last earth day

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/21/17247994/earth-day-2018-plastic-climate-change

Since the last Earth Day, some important things have happened regarding our planet. Some of the good things: Sea grass is regrowing in Chesapeake Bay, many new species were discovered, we're getting closer to finding other habitable planets, and the black-eyed leaf frog is no longer endangered.
Some of the bad: we're not learning from several of the natural disasters that occurred this year, the last northern white male rhino on the planet died (along with various other species that went extinct), and Greenland's ice is melting faster than we realize.

This article was written by Umair Irfan and Eliza Barclay at Vox. It was written for the dual purpose of providing information and hope, but also to inspire people to take action to solve some of the many issues the earth is facing presently. One of the interesting facts I read was that when the government decided to pay select farmers to farm in a different way without producing harmful fertilizer runoff, it worked and sea grass started to populate the once polluted bay again. If the government views this as a successful model, maybe they'll make a larger effort to promote conservation through incentives. While this article contained a few facts of hope, it was still overwhelmingly sad to read. So many species went extinct that we can never reclaim. We are doing a multitude of near-irreversible damages to our planet every day with the amount of plastic we dispose. This is an article that actually inspires me to go into a career path that would help to remedy some of the earth's problems. Even if I don't take that specific career path, I hope I can inspire change in a different way and I hope other people from this generation will realize the trouble that we're in and be motivated to fix it, unlike most of our leaders currently. 

Synthesis: some of the specific (more positive) facts of this article can be connected to Theodore Roosevelt's conservation of wildlife policies and efforts. In both instances, conservation attempts did make a change, even though we still have a long way to go.