I’m a hater. I drink a whole bottle of Haterade every morning before I venture out into this cold, bleak world.
Look, it’s not that I wouldn’t like to believe that a holiday like Earth Day could change our future. It’s just that like so many ~Awareness~ campaigns, it really misses the whole point.
In 1969, John McConnell proposed a day to “Honor the Earth” and celebrate peace, to be held on the first day of spring (in the northern hemisphere) in 1970. It was first signed off on by the UN. Then Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to extend the concept and hold a nationwide environmental “teach-in” on April 22 of that year. (The date was chosen because it veered around Easter and Passover, but fell before most colleges had settled into Finals Week and after most K-12 systems had Spring Break.)
The United Auto Workers were the largest financial supporters of the first Earth Day. Let that sink in a sec. Hurray, union. But that specific union…?
Lots of great legislation has been signed on subsequent Earth Days. Lots of learning initiatives were started. Lots of people show up with trash bags beside highways. I’ve planted trees about it!
But the problem with so many Earth Day activities is that they focus on the individual. What can you do to save our entire planet? Stop running the water while you brush your teeth (while Nestlé uses over a billion gallons each year.) Buy some shit from a brand that decided to greenwash for a day. Cut your plastic can yokes while Coke churns out 3.3 million tons of single-use plastic packaging. Plant a tree in your backyard – which you ostensibly own - while ignoring that historically redlined neighborhoods are 5-20 degrees hotter in the summer. Do Meatless Mondays believing that individual action matters while ignoring the need for responsibility to be placed proportionally.
Earth Day 2022’s theme (did you know they have themes each year?) is “Invest in Our Planet”, focusing on these points:
• Climate and Environmental Literacy
While the official Earth Day dot org™ still focuses on global peace… that seems to be a message that was hastily thrown overboard in most folks’ celebration (like so much plastic.)
Individual action absolutely matters. Be a good person, do good things, think about other people and our planet. Plant a tree if you want! But also? Don’t buy that you and your neighbors doing the right thing – as prescribed to you by an Exxon/Mobil commercial – will fix anything. (I’d love to tell you that petitions and voting are the solutions, but… well, at least they’re a drop in the compostable shit bucket.)
As an individual, really the best thing you can do is contact all your government representatives and ask them what they're doing about climate change because ultimately they're the ones who have the power to curb Nestle and Coke.