The week of Earth Day, social media feeds are flooded with images of trees, beaches, mountains, and wildlife. For a moment, everyone seems to agree that we love this planet’s natural beauty.

It’s stirring to feel that sense of unity around something — even more so when we as a nation feel hopelessly divided in today’s political climate. Rarely do we see people of different cultural backgrounds, political beliefs, and socioeconomic statuses come together in agreement. It is much more common to see people arguing, name-calling, and screaming into their own echo chambers than making any proactive effort to reach a hand across the political aisle.

It has not always been this way. Bipartisan cooperation used to be the norm. Nature, especially, used to be entirely nonpartisan. The cornerstones of our federal government’s environmental efforts were created not in a way that was red or blue — it was simply green.

Take the first Earth Day, for example. On April 22, 1970, Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D-WI) teamed up with Rep. Pete McCloskey (R-CA) to bring the nation’s attention to the environment. Twenty million people rallied across the country that day to join the nonpartisan initiative. This kickstarted several years of bipartisan efforts to make conservation a key piece of our government’s duties, beginning with the establishment of the Environmental........

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