It's Lindsay Smith Rogers. In honor of Earth Day, we bring you a special episode of Public Health on call, an essay read by Sam Myers, director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health.

In his essay, which was adapted from The Wings of Herons, a book series by the Constellation Project, he explores the incredible human evolution and technological

innovation that has brought us to a moment in time where our own ascendance is threatening

our future well-being on this planet.

He asks a crucial question, can we change?

Let's listen.

We find. We find ourselves

in one of history's greatest dramas.

The story began when a trick of evolution allowed a lone ape species to develop an exceptionally large and complex brain.

These brains have allowed us to bend nature toward our will,

unlocking an abundance of energy and resources that have fueled almost unimaginable improvements in human development.

In the last 75 years alone, life expectancy nearly doubled,

and child mortality and extreme poverty fell by a factor of five.

But the same advances in science and technology that drove these gains

are also accelerating our destruction of nature.

To feed ourselves, we claim 40% of the world's land surface and nearly half its accessible

fresh water.

We have felled half the planet's temperate and tropical forests.

Pollution from our enterprises contaminates air, water, and soil, and we're changing the planet's

climate at a critical pace. Two-thirds of the birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and mammals

that used to share the planet with us are gone.

A million species face extinction, many within the next several decades.

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