Recycling was touted as one way the ordinary American could help conserve the finite gifts of our mother planet. Government initiatives were adopted to force cities, states and companies to adopt clean-air standards. The Environmental Protection Agency was formed in 1970, the year of the first Earth Day observance.

Bans on DDT and lead-based paint, passage of the Clean Water Act and the U.S.-Canadian agreement to clean up the Great Lakes helped improve the environment for all of us.

But today, human-caused climate change poses a far greater challenge than those that threatened the Earth 36 years ago, and, mirroring 1970, the top echelons of the U.S. government seem oblivious to it.

Sen. Gaylord Nelson, credited by some with inspiring the first nationwide Earth Day, recalls, "All across the country, evidence of environmental degradation was appearing everywhere, and everyone noticed except the political establishment. . . . The people were concerned, but the politicians were not."

Congress and President Bush rejected as too burdensome to U.S. industry the 1997 Kyoto pact that would have limited greenhouse gas emissions. This year's energy bill lacks any effective measures for fossil-fuel conservation. Bush says he remains unconvinced that humans are causing serious climate change, despite a growing clamor from the world's top scientists that the evidence to the contrary is undeniable. Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch assumes the administration's know-nothing posture and talks more in partisan than scientific terms.

But local and state leaders, to their credit, are pulling their heads out of the sand and beginning to act to cut automobile and power-plant emissions. Utah joined other Western states recently at a conference to address ways to reduce the use of fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases.

We can only hope - for the Earth's sake and ours - that the federal government will finally be prompted to follow their lead. Before it's too late.