Here’s something to think about while you’re frying on the beach wondering whether the sunscreen you’ve slathered all over your body protects you from both kinds of ultraviolet rays. (Most brands don’t.) Why is it that so many of the people who bawl you out or cast an evil eye in your direction if you offhandedly toss a plastic soft-drink bottle into a regular trash can instead of a recycling bin are the same ones who sit in their gas-guzzling SUVs with the air-conditioning turned high while you’re all stuck in gridlock on Route 1?

It seems that almost all of us have blind spots when it comes to our environmental consciences, sometimes substituting small gestures ("I’d never throw my gum out the car window; some poor bird might grab it and choke") for meaningful action. The result is that, despite three-and-a-half decades of "Earth Days," our planet is in poorer health all the time. As someone who was involved in planning the first national Earth Day in 1970, I am saddened to see how many of our dire predictions for the year 2000 are coming true. We foresaw that, without serious global action against greenhouse-gas emissions, the polar ice caps would do some serious melting, and depletion of the ozone layer would cause a dramatic upsurge in breathing difficulties and cancers. We predicted that rising sea levels would endanger beaches, sending ocean-front homes tumbling into the sea and permanently altering the geography of the coastlines.

Today, we have experienced many instances of all of the above, from a rising tide of melanomas (particularly among young beach-frequenters) to the disappearance of approximately 80 percent of the wetlands that once protected the Gulf Coast near New Orleans. (Almost 600,000 acres of crucial vegetation have been swallowed up in the years since the first Earth Day, according to a new Louisiana State University study.) Every year, we see governments from coast to coast struggle to keep up with the annual need to replenish beaches, and we’ve seen houses plummet into the sea from Pensacola to Bethany Beach after even relatively minor storms.

Hurricanes and other meteorological adversities are getting more severe because the earth’s atmosphere and its seas are heating up so fast. A new study by the National Academy of Sciences reports that the past four decades have been the hottest period globally in the last 400 years, and NASA scientists have concluded that 2005 was the most sizzling year on record. It’s too soon to say how 2006 will turn out, but you might want to take a large umbrella, an old-fashioned hand fan and several extra quarts of water to what’s left of your favorite beach this summer.

In the Arctic, we’re seeing impacts of human-caused pollution that we scarcely could imagine back in 1970. This month we learned that polar bears are turning to cannibalism because longer seasons without ice prevent them from reaching their natural food. The bears also require sea ice for mating and giving birth, so their very existence is threatened. And with every animal species imperiled, the human race comes one step closer to its own extinction.

Yet, most of us still don’t really believe that what we are doing to our planet is suicidal. Or else, we’re just afraid to admit to ourselves that we’re killing, if not ourselves, future generations. Otherwise, we wouldn’t continue to elect politicians who treat environmentalists as pesky, petty annoyances —politicians whose "fiscally onservative," "free-market" posturing views environmental decay as a negligible price to pay for unfettered consumer gluttony.

Actually, in 2000, most Americans voted to elect a president to whom ecology is a top priority. And now Al Gore is spending a great deal of his time and energy trying to spread the message that we’re losing the ultimate war on terrorism. His new film about the effects of global warming, An Inconvenient Truth, is currently in release at commercial movie houses almost everywhere, and it definitely offers more hair-raising chills than Mission Impossible III or The Fast and The Furious 3. Heck, not even the new Superman can stop the horrors depicted in Gore’s flick. I don’t know how anyone can watch a scene like the disappearance of the snowcaps of Mount Kilimanjaro without wincing or gasping….

Gasping for air…gasping for a breath…gasping for a future. Gore’s film doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, but he’s not ready to throw in the towel. And he hopes the movie will mobilize more of us to get informed, get upset and get involved.

It’s true that our country has many other urgent social issues to address. And we each must decide which causes to take on as personal priorities. Yes, it would be great to live in a land that offers truly affordable and universal health care. And I would be thrilled to see gay people gain the legal right to marry. But what good will it do to resolve any other social issue if we continue to trod cavalierly down a path to destruction of our entire planet?

We’ve all heard people say they’re pleased that they’re getting older and won’t be around to witness the state of the world in another 50 years. We’ve heard folks say they’re glad they don’t have children because of the mess we’re bequeathing to them. Often, such statements are less a reflection of the speaker’s true beliefs than they are admissions of frustration—fear of futility in trying to improve the situation.

Back in the day, we called such rationalizations "copouts." As Al Gore’s film contends, we’re in bad shape, but much of the damage is not irreversible yet. We cannot, however, be content simply to recycle our newspapers and aluminum cans. We’ve got to walk or take public transportation more often—and drive less. We’ve got to abandon gas-guzzling vehicles. We must consider the impact of where and how we build our homes. And we must insist of those we elect to office (as well as other governments in this extremely small, fragile world) that they get tough on polluting industries, support alternative sources of energy, and make the environment their highest priority. As we’ve seen time and again in politics, public pressure can work wonders.

Or, we can simply shrug our shoulders, squeal our wheels, squander what’s left of our natural resources, say "to hell with future generations" and kiss our collective butts bye-bye. Which legacy do you prefer?