Tax Day, meet Earth Day. Earth Day, this is Tax Day.

Maybe it’s because I edit stories about both the economy and the environment, but this year I couldn’t help but notice the proximity of these two days on the calendar. U.S. taxpayers were supposed to file their 2022 returns by yesterday. This coming Saturday is when protecting our planet’s environment will be in focus, globally.

And I’m seeing a connection. Whether you’re thinking about fiscal or planetary health, big issues are currently at stake. Questions of individual and collective responsibility.  

Most Americans do pay the taxes they owe. And most say in polls they support the Paris Agreement goal – which nations formally signed on Earth Day 2016 – of addressing climate change by shifting increasingly toward clean energy sources. 

Yet difficult challenges lie ahead. In coming weeks the Monitor will be covering the U.S. fiscal imbalance. There’s a partisan standoff in Congress over raising the national debt limit, and a deeper issue is fast-rising debt that neither party has successfully addressed.

And we’ve recently documented the incomplete progress worldwide toward those Paris goals. 

To some extent, maintaining a strong economy and sustainable habitats are intertwined. Even though these are sometimes framed in either/or terms, it may prove hard to achieve one without the other. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, for example, recently described climate change as an “existential threat” from an economic as well as social perspective.

And at a recent conference of business economists, just a few blocks from the Monitor’s Washington office, one fiscal expert urged bipartisan efforts to address the widening imbalance between federal spending and revenues. 

“It’s not the biggest problem out there; it’s the one that weakens our ability to deal with all the others,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

She sees some in Congress pointing toward possible solutions, despite polarization that “is one of the biggest problems we face.” And yes, the same is happening on protecting Earth’s environment.

In fact, amid the challenges, it’s encouraging to take a lesson from the buds and blossoms that emerge around the time of Earth Day in the Northern Hemisphere each year: Under the right conditions, systems like an economy or a biosphere are resilient – more so than many might expect.