This Friday marks the 36th celebration of Earth Day. As such, it offers a good opportunity to assess the state of the environment.

Here in Illinois, we have a serious air-pollution problem. As a former employee of the non-profit Illinois Public Interest Research Group, I worked to coordinate environmental and citizens’ groups such as the Sierra Club, the League of Women Voters and the American Lung Association to petition elected officials to clean up the nearly two dozen coal-burning electric plants in our state that contribute to air pollution.

According to the American Lung Association, air pollution “significantly increases the risk of premature death, lung cancer, chronic bronchitis and heart attacks. In addition, it triggers asthma attacks, shortness of breath, coughing, wheezing and leads to increased trips to the emergency room and hospitalizations for asthma and other respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.” Additionally, Illinois PIRG has published a report claiming air pollution from our state’s power plants causes the premature deaths of 1,700 Illinoisans each year. In addition to soot and smog, these plants also emit toxic mercury, which concentrates as it rises through the food chain and can cause brain damage in children.

Many people would agree such a state of affairs is terrible, but we still need electricity. What’s a concerned citizen to do?

For starters, the good news is that practical solutions already exist; they just need to be implemented. For instance, the 23 coal-burning plants I mentioned earlier are emitting more pollution than they should be able to because of the exploitation of a 28-year-old loophole in a law called New Source Review. The law compels power plants to modernize their pollution control technology, which could cut pollution at some plants by four-fifths. It’s time to make these grandfathered plants meet modern air quality standards.

Opponents of this plan say it will be too expensive to bring these plants up to code. The real question is: What is your health worth? I’d say once the air is unfit to breathe, something has gone terribly awry with our priorities.

That our environmental priorities are skewed at the national level has become evident over the past four years. So far, the Bush administration has not only been completely unresponsive to environmental issues, it has also worked to roll back some of our most important protections, including the aforementioned New Source Review. Fortunately, there is something you can do: Write Gov. Blagojevich and Sens. Durbin and Obama and urge them to address these issues at the state and national levels. You can find out how to contact them and other elected officials at www.congress.org.

The environment need not be a partisan issue. Although widely perceived as a Democratic cause, environmental legislation has traditionally been a bipartisan effort. Republican President Theodore Roosevelt laid the foundation for conservation efforts; Republican Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air and Clean Water acts into law and established the Environmental Protection Agency. The air we breathe is perhaps the most basic element that we hold in common – we all have a stake in protecting it.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.