Earth Day 2026: Amid climate doom how humans saved planet before

Earth Day 2026 is here. While there is widespread climate doom about the planet's deteriorating health due to human activity.

However, that is not the full story.

Collective efforts have saved the planet before. For example, deadly smog in London.

In 1952, the air of London looked less healthy and more like the production of Sweeney Todd.

This is because Londoners were using cheap, dirty coal to heat up their homes in winter, whose toxic smog was choking the city's skyline and air.

Rachel Feltman tells Scientific American, "It wasn’t actually news to anyone that London had dirty air, but this tragedy pressured the government into forming a committee about it." The members found that the smog was mainly driven by smoke from the cheap, dirty coal that people were using to heat their homes."

Further, Kate Marvel, an ex-NASA research physicist and now the head of the nonprofit Project Drawdown, says, "This real gross, real dirty, real soot-burning stuff is called, of all things, nutty slack.

Enter Sir Gerald Nabarro, a politician from the Conservative Party.

He was not an environmentalist, Feltman adds; however, his efforts forced the government to act.

"Nabarro was far from some kind of bleeding-heart environmental-justice warrior. He just thought it would be cool if the air sucked a little less."

Marvel adds the rest of the picture, "So he introduced a bill in Parliament, which essentially shamed the government into doing something about this problem."

Thus, the Clean Air Act of 1956 was born.

Within a decade after the legislation, Marvel says, "We saw pretty dramatic improvements in air quality."

With Earth heating up more than ever before, this example will serve as a boost to environmentalists that all is not lost in saving the planet.