April 22 will mark Earth Day 47 for our over-taxed planet, a good time to take stock of the environmental progress we’ve made over the decades, which in some cases is significant and, in other cases, looks more like regress.

The modern environmental movement was sparked, at least in part, by Rachel Carson’s book “Silent Spring,” which detailed the enormous damage being visited on plant and animal species because of the overuse of the pesticide DDT. The public was outraged, and the pesticide was banned.

Now, our society is dumping massive quantities of glyphosate on fields around the globe and howls of protest are once again rising. Glyphosate is used on crops that have been genetically modified (GMO) to be immune to the poison, the idea being that the poison will kill the weeds but not the corn, or soybean, or whatever. But the heavy use of the poison has led to resistant weeds, so new poisons are needed with new GMOs.

One of the problems with this plan is that humans have not been genetically modified to be immune to glyphosate, and it is showing up everywhere: from wine made with organic grapes, to—as Moms Across America found—breast milk.

Monsanto, the largest seller of glyphosate via the product Roundup, disputes these findings, just as it disagrees with the World Health Organization’s finding that glyphosate is a probable carcinogen.

It is not, however, too much of a stretch to call glyphosate this generation’s DDT, and as primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall recently wrote, “Someday we shall look back on this dark era of agriculture and shake our heads. How could we have ever believed that it was a good idea to grow our food with poisons?”

If one looks only at the state of pesticide and herbicide use in the U.S., it’s easy to imagine that humans are making no progress at all in the area of the environment. In fact, however, there are areas where a bit of optimism might be in order.

There is a tool for measuring environmental progress of countries called the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), developed by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, which measures countries policies regarding their “protection of human health and protection of ecosystems” (epi.yale.edu/chapter/key-findings). In overall rankings for 2016, the U.S. comes in 26th out of 180 countries; China comes in at 109; Scandinavian countries have the top slots, and impoverished, war-torn countries such as Afghanistan and Somalia are at the bottom of the pack.

The United States and China are the two top fossil-fuel polluters in the world, but on Earth Day this year, the leaders of the two countries, President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping, have promised they will both sign and join the global Paris Climate Agreement to combat climate change, which will also be signed by more than 130 countries at a ceremony at the United Nations.

The authors who assembled the 2016 EPI Report suggest that this may sound better than it is, because “More than 3.5 billion people, or half of the world’s population, live in nations where average exposure to fine particulate matter exceeds levels the World Health Organization (WHO) considers safe.” Further the report asserts, “The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement specifies climate change action expected from all countries, yet solid metrics to evaluate performance remain elusive. Measuring climate change performance—that is, assessing which countries are implementing policies that result in measurable climate mitigation—is one of the most urgent challenges facing society today.”

So, the climate agreement is not perfect, and indeed at least a couple of the Republican presidential candidates have promised to scuttle the agreement, if they can, as soon as they get into office. But the signing event is still progress. Also, more U.S. citizens—75%—now express concern about global climate change than they did a decade ago, when a majority of residents thought global climate change was just a bunch of nonsense invented by liberals intent on selling more solar panels.

No doubt there is a long way to go on many fronts and, sometimes, it does seem we take one step back for every two steps forward. For instance, according to the EPI report, “The number of global deaths due to unsafe drinking water has declined over the past two decades, but the deaths from poor air quality have increased.”

At least, however, we have numerous organizations around the world measuring our progress, and growing acknowledgment by both the public and politicians that progress needs to be made. That’s an improvement over the past.