Earth Day

John Horning notes today's milestone:

Fifty years ago this week, a group of visionaries created an event to honor, celebrate and protect the earth. The original founders of Earth Day were inspired by an understanding that Earth and its life support systems were increasingly vulnerable. They also understood a profound and simple truth—if the Earth suffers, then humanity suffers too.

We face some difficult years. The pandemic may just be the first of widespread environmental disasters coming our way. That makes a positive vision even more urgent.

As we commemorate this 50th anniversary of Earth Day, we do so with a somber reckoning that we have not heeded planetary health warnings early or well enough. Therefore these times require ever more bold actions to realign our commitment to Earth and its natural systems and our mutual well-being. We also must deepen our commitment to greater equity and inclusion in our human communities to ensure that people are treated with compassion and afforded the dignity that all people deserve.

Just the past year has seen increasing commitment to the climate justice issue--including my own. I hope I can continue to learn and find ways to contribute. I'm reading Margaret Klein Salamon's new book, Facing the Climate Emergency, which aims to "give people the tools to confront the climate emergency, face their negative emotions, and channel them into protecting humanity and the natural world".

Update (April 23):  Salamon acknowledges that it's painful to face reality.

However, I’m here to remind you that groups of concerned citizens have changed the world many times before — and they have done it through the power of truth. Telling the truth, and spreading it rapidly and completely, has been a central strategy in successful social movements.

And a friend passed along Laura Klivans' article about handling the "fear that more disruptive events are on the horizon due to climate change".

For some, feelings of sadness about the state of the planet aren't new — they're constant and at times debilitating. This experience goes by many names, among them eco-anxiety, climate grief and climate despair.

A movement has begun to help people face these feelings — and build resilience so they can stay engaged with the work of fighting the climate crisis.

Update (April 25):  Robert Hunziker highlights the documentary Planet of the Humans by Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore. Clearly there is an issue with "greenwashing" or the influence of fossil fuel interests in the environmental movement, but I found the movie to be profoundly depressing. Right wing press seems all too enthusiastic about the criticism of renewable energy and Brian Kahn notes that population control as the only suggested solution is problematic at best.

It’s got a bit more than a whiff of eugenics and ecofascism, which is a completely bonkers takeaway from everything presented. If renewables are so bad, then what does a few million less people on the planet going to do? Oh, and who are we going to knock off or control for? Who decides? How does population control even solve the problem of corporate influence on nonprofits and politics?

Kahn says the documentary appeals to the right because "it ignores the solution of holding power to account and sounds like a racist dog whistle".

What’s most frustrating about Gibbs’ film is he walks right up to some serious issues and ignores clear solutions. The critique of the compromised corporate philanthropy model is legit. We should absolutely hold nonprofits to account when they don’t live up to their missions. But the solution isn’t to take the leap to population control. It’s to tax the rich so they can’t use philanthropic funding as cover for their misdeeds while simultaneously filling government coffers to implement democratic solutions.

Update (May 1):  Sophia McClennen defends the myth-busting shown in Planet of the Humans.

At the heart of the film is the notion that the real "inconvenient truth" that Al Gore once referred to in his iconic environmentalist film is actually more like Moore's "awful truth": Maybe we didn't focus on reducing consumption because we didn't want to. Maybe it was easier to believe that renewables would give us all the energy we wanted without asking us to change. Or, maybe we didn't know that renewables weren't the energy saviors we thought they were. After watching this film, you won't be able to think about the human toll on the planet in the same way again.

Update (May 8):  Louis Proyect also defends Planet of the Humans as taking more of an anti-growth stand rather than promoting population control.

To even suggest that there are ecological limits, you risk being labeled a Malthusian. Is the Green New Deal supposed to be some sort of inextinguishable guarantee of a bounteous life no matter the size of the global population? Only if you ignore the economic/ecological data.

Update (May 21):  Dave Borlace presents a very systematic criticism of Planet of the Humans.

Update (June 9):  Josh Schlossberg defends POTH for taking on the problem of our modern lifestyles.

For hundreds of thousands of years, we humans didn’t distinguish ourselves from the natural world. Eventually, we evolved self-awareness and, with that, the concept of our own mortality. To cope with this crushing insight, we became obsessed with clinging to pleasures while chasing away anything that reminds us of our inevitable demise.

This is why we crave stimulation and distraction, why we’re addicted to drugs, alcohol, food, sex, shopping, travel, our smartphones, etc. Back in the day, with only a few million of us using simple tools, our ecological footprint was minimal. But, today, with billions of us exploiting modern technology, it’s a disaster.

My favorite quote from Planet of the Humans is, "If we get ourselves under control, all things are possible." So, how do we do that and move forward in a way that makes sense?