Today is Earth Day, the 53rd one ever. It's possibly the first one that I am actually consciously observing. Not that I'm really doing anything special (except, shortly, ranting into the smol void), but I didn't just happen to hear by surprise about today being Earth Day, I knew it was coming in advance and was mentally ready for it to happen.
This post will conclude with a long angry rant which you don't have to read which is mostly just me venting frustration with what really feels like the most visible form of online discourse around environmentalism these days, at least in the very small subspace of the net that I have some eye on. But let's ease into the rage with some more fun and/or interesting stuff first.
1. Don't confuse Earth Day with Earth Hour. They're different. Earth Hour (established 2007) is really dumb. Not that Earth Day (est. 1970) is any kind of beacon of hope or anything, but turning off one of the least energy hungry parts of your home (the lights) for just one hour per year (about one percent of one percent of the whole year) as a kind of symbolic gesture to "raise awareness", as if that still needed doing, is empty and vacuous. Earth Day has a history of education (particular "environmental teach-ins" on university campuses) and actually doing things. Picking up trash is not in and of itself going to save the world, but it has more impact than switching off your lights for an hour.
2. The first photographs of the entire Earth taken from outer space appeared in the late 60s, and the first Earth Day happened in 1970. A lot of people who were there at the time do not think that this close sequencing in time is a coincidence. If you've poked around my Gemini capsule lately you'll know I'm working on a little project that tries to play this up. It would have been nice to able to announce it as finished or mostly finished today, but oh well. Still, know that Earth Day dates right back to the start of, and probably played a role in the start of, wide public awareness of the fragility of our one and only home and the notion of planetary stewardship
3. Bike history geeks know that the early 1970s saw a "bike boom" in the US. This was the time when riding a bike became a socially acceptable thing for an adult American to do. Before this point, bikes were strictly for kids who weren't old enough or poor people who couldn't afford to drive a car like a respectable grown up. The boom didn't last long, in terms of how many years bike sales were substantially higher than they were in the 60's, but it shifted the demographics of the bike market permanently. Ever since, there's been more money in adult bikes than kid's bikes, a lot more, whereas for the whole 20th century before that point it had been the other way around. This boom is commonly attributed in mainstream folk history to the high cost of gasoline during the 1970s oil crises, but that's false. The first serious oil shock happened in 1973, and adult bike sales were booming big time in '71 and '72. Cycling Retrogrouch extraordinaire Grant Petersen, who was there at the time, attributes at least the start of the US 70's bike boom to mass cycling events organised as part of the earliest Earth Days.
4. The original '70s era Earth Day (actually, Earth Week) logo is a beautiful thing, a triumph of simple, colourful graphic design. I'd never seen it before until very recently, either early this year or late last. If it weren't for the internet, I'd never have seen it at all. It's a travesty this logo isn't in wide use today. Come on, retro/vintage has never been cooler, young people today would absolutely eat this logo up. Have you seen the current bland as hell logo, reminiscent of nothing so much as Internet Explorer? Who is even in charge of Earth Day branding? They are asleep at the wheel, no question.
Glorious 1970 Earth Week logo, preserved by Wikimedia
5. For the 20th Earth Day in 1990, mountain climbers from the United States, the Soviet Union (on its last legs) and the People's Republic of China jointly ascended Mount Everest, for the first time ever, and carried down tonnes of trash left behind by previous climbers. You might doubt such a thing is even possible, but no word of a lie, the Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb had an even cooler logo than Earth Day itself. They took the already awesome Earth Day logo and slapped a majestic dove silhouette over it and an awesome geometrically perfect Mt Everest made of fine vertical lines. Not even ninjas wailing on guitars could improve this. Modern graphic design needs to get on this level. Despite the graphic sublimity, this climb, kind of like the Soviet drifting ice research stations I wrote about in an issue of Circumlunar Transmissions a while back, is one of those historical instances of human adventure that you would think ought to be documented to death on the internet but, actually, there's surprisingly little about it online. It feels like it deserves to be better known, or at least easier to learn more about. That said, let's not get carried away: looking back from the perspective of 2023, it is hard to deny that the long term impact of a 1990 symbolic gesture by the US, Russia and China in support of world peace and environmental protection has been, well, jack squat.
Paltry English Wikipedia article on Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb, but oh, that logo!
6. Alright, rant time. I haven't even actively looked, but I confidently assert nevertheless based on recent years of observation that there's a very good chance at least some of you have seen some God awful "takes" on Earth Day online insisting that events like this are nothing more than proof that environmentalism has been effectively hijacked by evil capitalists and that asking ordinary people to lift even a finger in their everyday lives to help the planet is pure victim blaming and shifts attention away from the real culprits, the corporations. Instead of guilt tripping innocent children into turning off their lights and taking shorter showers, we should be busy throwing CEOs in jail or something. Nobody who isn't a politician or a literal billionaire has even a scrap of moral responsibility for climate change! Folks, I'm not exaggerating for comedic effect, the internet is full of people who literally believe exactly this. And if you tone this stance down just a little bit, it's absolutely mainstream, it's an attitude you will see espoused openly and unashamedly by respected news outlets. Deutsche Welle literally ran an article earlier this year entitled "How can we stop the rich from destroying the planet?".
The truth is that the real hijacking of the environmental movement has been by some kind of hysterical class warfare movement. I'm not saying capitalism is good for planet. Of course it's not. I'm not saying billionaires are the environment's friends. Of course they aren't. I'm not saying governments could not possibly have done more than they have. Of course they could have. But you emphatically do not need to be some kind of climate change denying, big business championing, SUV driving, Ayn Rand worshipping nutjob to push back against this attitude. It's not the blaming corporations and rich people I'm objecting to, it's the gross exaggeration of the extent of their contribution relative to that of "ordinary people", and it's the total washing of hands of responsibility where responsibility actually exists and the insistent claiming that nothing anybody individually does can possibly matter when it plainly does.
You will have no doubt encountered claims like "the richest 1% of people contribute as more to climate change than the poorest 50% of people!". That's true! And it's shocking. And it's unjust. And we should change it. But this fact in isolation is misleading. It ignores the fact that the richest 1% and the poorest 50% combined contribute less than the middle 49%. A lot less! If eco-fascist lynch mobs wiped the richest 1% off the face of the Earth, the majority of the problem would still remain. The entire aviation industry contributes about 2% of global carbon emissions. If Greta Thunberg presided over a ceremonial crushing of all private jets into cubes (for recycling, of course), while Elon Musk, forced to watch with his eyes pried open with matchsticks, sobbed inconsolably, the internet would be in throes of ecstasy, but approximately nothing would be actually accomplished. Even a literal ban on powered flight of any kind for any purpose would leave more than 95% of the problem to be solved.
Even if you discard the poorest 50% and the richest 10%, the "upper middle 40%" (a category which includes me personally and almost certainly you personally, too) contribute almost as much as the richest 10%. If you think the upper middle 40% are innocent and should not be encouraged to change their lifestyles at all, and you also believe in global scale economic justice, you have to confront the fact that dragging the top 10%'s contribution down to "our" level and simultaneously lifting the bottom 50%'s contribution up to that same level would have the overall effect of substantially *increasing* total global emissions. No informed and right-thinking person can possibly characterise the most important part of the fight against climate change as a large majority of the population dragging a small ultra-rich minority into line.
The ultra-rich surely have tremendous, disgustingly high individual contributions to this problem, and by all means let's shame them for it, but thank goodness, on a global scale there are approximately zero of them. Because of this, their total contribution is actually small. Meanwhile, the very poor number in the billions, but their individual contributions are so trivial that their total contribution is also small. But the upper middle 40% are in a kind of sweet spot. We also number in the billions *and* we have substantial individual contributions, so our contributions actually add up to something that matters. We have a very large collective capacity for change. We jointly have our hands together on one of the largest levers on the planet killing machine. It's true, the upper 10% have an even bigger lever, but it's genuinely only a little bigger than ours. It's not a serious distortion of reality to say that they are the same size. And, honestly, comparing the richest 10% against the upper middle 40%, which group do you think is collectively less sociopathic? Combining our capacity for actual impact with the higher likelihood that a good chunk of us can be convinced to do the right thing, we honestly might be the safest bet.
Poorest 50% vs richest 1/10% stuff based on this visualisation of UN Emissions Gap Report
Yes, "our leaders" could reduce our collective contribution for us without any of us little people lifting a finger, by investing in lower carbon electricity generation and better public transport and a whole bunch of other things. I don't deny it. I'm not saying they shouldn't do it. I'm not saying we shouldn't shout at them for dragging their feet on it. But let's not pretend we can't play a role, too. If we put all of our eggs in the basket of system level changes decreasing the environmental impact of unchanged individual lifestyles, we run two serious risks. One is that that those system level changes just don't happen no matter how much we kick and scream and vote because our political and economic systems are so damn broken. Another is that those system level changes somehow happen and then people take them as license to relax and increase their personal consumption which partially or maybe even completely cancels the changes out - ye olde Jevons paradox strikes again. And let's not forget that global justice angle. Even if the Phantom Thieves of Hearts intervened and all the politicians and the captains of industry abruptly mended their ways, they simply do not have a system change magic wand large enough to allow the poorest 50% to start living like the upper middle 40% without global emissions increasing. That's sheer la la fantasy land thinking. But if we get some system level changes *and* we reduce individual consumption as well, then those two changes don't fight against each other Jevons style, instead they stack and give us an even higher bonus on our saving throw against climate change. The best case scenario involving mass adoption of individual action is...do I even have to say this?...it's better than the best case scenario when most people do nothing but point their finger higher up the chain. People who refuse to even consider the prospect of mass individual action against climate change are literally making the best case scenario worse. They are not helping.
I'm not saying we should all wear rags and live on rice and shiver through the winter. I am not saying politicians and CEOs are blameless angels. I am just pushing back very hard against three ideas I am encountering more and more. First, that nothing we as individuals can do can possibly matter, that our individual contributions are completely dwarfed by other contributions totally beyond our control. Second, that even if our actions could in principle make a difference, that it's some kind of moral outrage to ask little old *us* to do anything, that we can and should pass the buck to some even guiltier party. Third, that only financially very well off people can afford to take effective action against climate change because greener lifestyles are more expensive. All three of these ideas are dangerous misinformation.
Greenhouse gas emissions from energy usage in domestic buildings (from lights, cooking, refrigeration, air conditioning, heating, and hot water) are about 11% of all of global emissions. That's not to be sneezed at, and it's nearly double the 6.6% that come from commercial buildings like offices, restaurants and shops. Much like with the rich vs the poor, it's not that individual commercial buildings aren't worse than individual residential buildings, of course they are. But they are vastly outnumbered, so the residential buildings contribute more overall. Don't let anybody tell you that taking shorter, cooler showers, washing your clothes in cooler water, heating your home less and wearing a sweater indoors is a pointless, idiotic sacrifice. An 11% slice of the pie is well worth attacking by any means possible. If household energy usage were reduced by 20%, that would be as big a win as completely banning powered flight. 7% of global emissions come from transporting people by car, motorcycle or bus. That is more than the roughly 5% that comes from transporting stuff around by trucks. I don't want to lean on this point as hard as the building energy point, because while nobody is under strong financial incentives to take longer showers or make their house toastier - quite the opposite, saving energy saves you money - plenty of people do actually have little choice but to drive to get to work to support their families, and I don't want to be dismissive of that (though of course there is still a lot of needless driving in the world). But I mention this point mostly to highlight that moving ordinary people around in the course of their daily lives constitutes a larger slice of road transport emissions (which dwarf air and rail and shipping combined - and, yes, that little fact is indeed relevant for my "One Billion, One Continent" scenario, I've not failed to notice) than commercial transport of stuff. Before I knew better, I would have guessed the other way around, and I bet others would have too. That's the assumption that is encouraged by the attitude that I am trying to fight back against.
Let's not forget that a full quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions are tied to food production, or that a full quarter of the total calories those emissions yield us end up being wasted. Global emissions from food waste are three times global emissions from aviation (sorry if I'm starting to sound like some kind of aviation industry shrill, I promise I'm not, it's just that aviation is consistently presented in the media as if it were the single largest problem we face, but it's not, there are multiple problems which are both larger and easier to solve). Some of that waste happens in the supply chain, but about a third of it is squarely down to consumer habits. I have sure as hell bought food, let it go bad in the fridge and thrown it out. Don't pretend you haven't, either! No individual consumer is under perverse economic incentives or forced by bad government policies to waste food. A hugely disproportionate amount of the emissions related to food production, relative to how much energy or protein they provide, come from raising livestock or fish. Beef is by far the most environmentally destructive meat and chicken by far the least, and since beef is also more expensive than chicken, greening up your diet saves you money. You don't have to go vegan to have a substantial impact here, you don't even have to go vegetarian. Cut your meat consumption in half, and whatever proportion of your meat consumption is made up of beef, cut that proportion in half, too. Do this gradually over the course of three years if that's easier for you. If your family has always eaten roast beef on Christmas Day every year for ten consecutive generations, that's fine, you can keep that tradition alive, just back off for the rest of the year to compensate. This change will save you money and really, truly will substantially reduce your individual contribution to climate change. This is so easy, no laws need to be passed, no new technology needs to be developed, we don't even need to give anything up completely, just shift the distribution of what we eat in a different direction, and yet we are dropping the ball on this so badly. I read a news report last month that said "the global production of animal flesh for human consumption was 45% higher in 2020 than in 2000 as the global taste for meat skyrockets". 45% higher! Are you going to blame Donald Trump for that? Are you going to blame Elon Musk for that? Do you think the richest 1% or even the richest 10% of humanity have driven that 45% increase by packing away multiple steaks per day out of sheer spite? Is this skyrocketing demand for meat the fault of capitalism? Or teh corporations? Knock it off! Nobody is being forced by anybody or any -isms to eat more meat and not less, and yet we are. We are literally destroying the Amazon to make more room available for grazing cows so we can eat them, and we have nobody to blame for this but our own lack of self control at the dinner table.
(before anybody writes me to object, yes, I am aware of the concept of a food desert. The people living in food deserts lack much agency to make this kind of shift. They are victims, they have my sympathy, it is not my intent to blame them for anything, and corporate control of food supply unquestionably plays a huge role in their plight. The food desert phenomenon is by far the worst in the US, and that 45% increase in global demand is not coming from the US. It's true that a good chunk of my readers probably are. I'm not pretending that this rant is directed at everybody who would benefit from hearing it. I'm just venting. But, hey, let's also not pretend that smolnet readership isn't likely highest in the parts of the world with the highest incidence of people with meat-heavy diets trying to blame other people's inaction for climate change)
Global emission share figures mostly from this Our World in Data page
DW: Farmed animals suffer amid exploding meat demand
DW: Brazil struggles to protect Amazon amid booming beef demand
Serious, concerted and sustained effort by people who are not in any sense rich or elite to address their largest individual contributions to climate change is not futile, it's not delusional, it's not naive, it's not like trying to bail out a sinking ocean liner using a teaspoon. It can in fact have substantial impacts, and we need as many of those as we can get. Anybody who tells you it will make no difference is wrong. Don't listen to them. Don't let them distract you by screaming about how we need top-down system change. We need both, a lot of both, as much of both as we can get. They don't need to arrive at the same time. There is no sense in stubbornly insisting "Hey, buddy, I'm not moving my lever until you move yours!". Either kind of change alone is better than neither. If you work hard to reduce your home energy consumption and then a few years later your country shuts down all its coal power plants and builds greener ones, it's not as if you reduced your energy consumption in vain, it wasn't a sacrifice for nothing, your individual change still combines with the system change years later just as well as it would have if both changes had happened at the same time, or if the system change came first. Your early actions have made the later shift away from coal more impactful than it would have been if you had done nothing, congratulations! This is the beauty of degrowth, or downshifting. If you buy into the notion of technological progress and system change allowing us to live however we like forever without consequences, you face a nasty co-ordination problem. The little people can never push their levers up further or faster than the people at the top pull the system's levers down, otherwise one change cancels out the other. It's a risky eternal tightrope walk, or rather multiple simultaneous eternal risky tightrope walks in parallel. Good luck with that! If we commit to moving all the levers down, coordination is not required. There should still be some sense of priority, it makes sense to move the biggest levers first, but there is no such thing as a futile or pointless or senseless downshift. The worst such a change can possibly be is "ahead of schedule". That's not a bad thing! Forget pointless symbolic gestures, forget finger pointing and class warfare. Let's educate ourselves on what the levers are and face up to the fact that a lot of 'em - not all of 'em, maybe not the single largest one, but a lot of 'em and at least some of the big ones - are in our own hands.
