Some scenes must have been breathtakingly quiet, like the pristine oceans teeming with jellyfish (and only jellyfish) and emerging forests of plants reaching upward even before animals emerged on land. Some scenes must have been cataclysmically loud, like impact events and eruptions. The series depicts and explains adaptations and evolutions. But the constant is an Earth untrammeled by humans—without human-created chemicals, machinery, agriculture, resource extraction, or unnatural pollutants. It stretches our twenty-first century imaginations to envision a planet so uncorrupted. Maybe that’s why it is our evening escape.
Here we find ourselves in the Anthropocene, a geologic period defined by the impact that humans and our lifeways have on Earth and its atmosphere. How can law and policies make life on Earth safer right now and in the future?
The articles in this issue delve into complex problems currently affecting environmental health and safety while looking ahead at the kinds of legal and policy adaptations necessary to protect life on our planet as it will look 5, 20, or 100 years in the future (which feels like the immediate term in the geologic timescale). Climate change, energy, chemical exposures, and environmental justice take center stage. Several authors home in on how states and municipalities will need to adapt coastlines, utilities, and the energy grid to withstand climate change–driven extreme precipitation levels and temperatures, and ask how such adaptations can be made without leaving vulnerable communities behind. These articles also address how the federal government can equitably distribute funds to protect and improve vital infrastructure in communities across the country. The issue includes a case study of the health, safety, and environmental justice fallout from the Jackson, Mississippi, drinking and wastewater system failures.
Other articles examine whether various chemical safety regulations governing PFAS, pesticides, and hazardous materials currently protect or fail to protect consumers and others who may be at risk of chemical exposures due to their workplaces or residences. What key policy adjustments are needed to shift from a reactive to a proactive approach to chemical safety? In several articles, readers will see the theme of “better information” emerge. One article offers insight into how companies can use artificial intelligence tools to enhance internal and external environmental health and safety practices. In various ways, several articles posit that environmental health and safety can improve if consumers and other members of the public have access to better information, including safety warnings, exposure notifications, utility vulnerability assessments, and accident-avoidance methods.
There’s no going back to a silent Earth covered only in lichen or featuring docile Brachiosaurus munching on ferns. But can we imagine an Earth where we enjoy and benefit from all of humanity’s advances while maximizing environmental health and safety? This issue’s authors offer reasonable strategies for making that a reality.
