An Earth Day Rant and CHALLENGE

So it's Earth Day again, that magical day when people who rarely spend more time outside than it takes to get from their car to the mall entrance pretend to care about the environment. Hooray. Everyone post a picture of the planet with a little banner about how pretty trees are so you can feel good about yourself and then continue taking thirty minute showers, using four paper towels when you needed one, leaving all the lights on and everything plugged in at all times, and consuming plastic and fossil fuels at an alarming rate.

See? Everything's fine now!

Oh, did that sound a little bitter? Look, I know that a lot of you reading this are not the people I described above. I know that a lot of you honestly care and want to fix things just as much as I do. The thing is, we're not doing it.

I am included in this. I try to do what I can: unplug things, turn lights off, take short showers less frequently, pick up litter, reduce, reuse, recycle, work for a conservation organization, etc. But there's only so much you can do. You can bring reusable bags to the store but everything you buy comes with a pound of plastic packaging. The fact that I do work for this conservation organization means that I don't have enough money to buy all organic, it's often hard to buy local, and I drive an enormous gas-guzzling car now because my tiny fuel efficient one got wrecked and my parents offered this one to me for free which was incredibly kind of them and I was in no position to pass it up. I hope to buy a fuel efficient one in the future but I'm about to drive this behemoth 1,400 miles and I feel kind of sick about it but it's what I have to do.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has changed its language. It no longer talks about what we can do to stop global warming. It talks about what we can do to limit it to two degrees (Celsius). Spoiler alert: We're not going to do it. The big businesses are actually trying to get regulations loosened, the government is wishy-washy at best, and the media is still focusing on whether or not the people believe in climate change. I wonder how many people and animals will have their homes destroyed, starve, or run out of water before people will stop caring about everyone's right to their own opinion and start taking action based on the science. Obviously, it will be too late. It's already too late.

"Conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man..." Aldo Leopold wrote that in 1948. 67 YEARS AGO. And if anything it is more true now than it was then.

Everyone knows that fracking is using millions of gallons of water while much of the country is in a prolonged drought, that it poisons groundwater, that it ruins habitat, that it is detrimental to the health of anything living anywhere near the mines. But who cares, right? It's natural gas. Natural means good! We'll have a cheap solution for a few years until we use all of it up just like we're doing with oil and then we'll all be fucked again. But why would we waste money figuring out solutions now when we could make money by pushing the problem onto future generations?!

All of this makes me want to scream and punch people and throw up but it also leads to that age-old question: So what do you do about it? I've been thinking about this a lot lately in terms of my career as well as my personal habits. I might make a separate blog post about that later, but for now the short answer is: I don't know.

But I have an idea. I'm issuing a challenge:

I'd like to make Earth Day like New Year's Eve, where we all make at least one resolution. It can be small! It doesn't have to cost money! Just pick something simple that you know you can do but haven't been and try to stick to it for a whole year. A lot of them will become habit pretty quickly. Then next year, make a new one. We're going to make this a thing.

My Earth Day Resolutions:
1. I will remember to bring my reusable bags to the grocery store every time this year and be more emphatic about refusing plastic bags when I really don't need them.
2. I will master the art of the 5 minute shower.
3. I will go camping at least three times this summer.

Edit to Add:
4. I will use locally-sourced fruit, vegetables, and eggs when possible and actually research where in my community to get more local produce.