What is Earth Day ANYWAY?
Wait. When is Earth Day?
Do you celebrate Earth Day? I don't.
What is Earth Day ANYWAY?
Earth Day maybe less heard of nowadays but it was a radical movement in the 1970s.
Considering myself as environmentally conscious individual, I am aware that Earth Day is on this year 22th April. As I scrolled through Facebook that day, I saw WWFHK posting Facebook posts on celebrating Earth Day, as they would on other environmental dates such as World Bird Migration Day, World Water Day and World Forest Days—days that no one would have heard of or care about.
And I wonder, who else besides me noticed today is Earth Day? And if people did notice, what had people done besides liking the post?
Origin and History of Earth Day
Earth Day is found by the U.S. Senator, Gaylord Nelson. The idea seeded in his mind and was firmly planted after witnessing the massive destruction left by the oil spill in Santa Barbara, Calif in 1969. Nelson appointed Denis Hayes, an environmental activist as the coordinator of the first Earth Day. To maintain the momentum of the Earth Day, students played a central role in the movement. Hayes recruited a team of 85 students, young environmental actors and volunteers to promote the day across the nation.
The first Earth Day was on April 22, 1970. It was a radical move in that time of the history. 20 million Americans walked onto streets, occupying parks and public halls to oppose against unsustainable practices and fight for environmental protection. Parts of the city were effectively shut on that day. Achieving a rare political alignment, the Republicans and the Democrats, the rich and the poor, bosses and labors, all come to call for environmental protection. According to Hayes, the first Earth Day was at least five times bigger than any anti-war rally and 20 times larger than any civil rights rally.
Front page of The New York Times covering the first ever Earth Day on April 23, 1970.
However, after nearly half of the millennium, Earth Day has been changing. Receding its initial support, people become more critical about it. Some call it just another day of feel-good fairs and corporate greenwashing.
But before talking about Earth Day's bad, here are the major achievements of Earth Day.
It Sparked Environmental Legislation
Shortly after 8 months of the first Earth Day in 1970, the United States Environmental Protection Agency was founded. An unprecedented stage of environmental legislation was also sparked: many other groundbreaking environmental laws, including but not limited to the Clean Water Act in 1972, the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the Clean Air Act in 1990 and the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976, were passed. The Earth Day had been successful calling for environmental protection onto the national political agenda which is previously non-existence in the police sector.
It has an Environmental Education Purpose
As summarized by New York Times, organizers took no money from corporations and held teach-ins to challenge corporate and government leaders in the first Earth Day in 1970. Earth Day is initially and essentially a national teach-in, where prolonged period of lectures and discussions are held a form of social protest. In that time of the history, when environmental protection is a new concept, the Earth Day was definitely reminding and educating the mass, the government and the business sector the importance of environmental protection.
Now, some schools carry out special environmental themed activities on Earth Day. Teaching kids on recycling, building solar ovens, planting in gardens are some examples.
It Accomplished Environmental Campaigns
Besides Earth Day’s education purpose, each year, a theme is announced for Earth Day to work on in the coming five years. Environmental campaigns are carried subsequently. In the year of 2016, the theme is Trees. The Earth Day Network plan an ambitious goal of will planting 7.8 billion trees over the next five years in combat against global warming. An acre of tree absorbs 2.5 tons of carbon annually, which is equivalent to the amount of carbon emitted by driving a car 26,000 miles. Although a single act is not enough to solve global climate change, it poses the bold statement and the active position of the environmental activists.
Along with the reforestation, Earth Day Network also continues in making efforts in environmental protection. This year’s Earth Day campaign includes, the Global Environmental and Climate Literacy Campaign where the committee will research on status of environmental literacy policies in the U.S.; online petition urging international leaders to preserve endangered wildlife; and training programs in developing countries to empower women and mobilize environmental actions.
It Went HUGE: Earth Day Going International
The Earth Day was initiated in the U.S.. Twenty years later, Earthy Day went global. And now, in its 46 years history, there are 184 countries, 5,000 environmental groups and 1 billion people around the globe participating the Earth Day each year. The Earth Day becomes the largest civic observance in the world.
However, as mentioned before, Earth Day has been changed since its first presence. Now, some criticizes whether it is still impactful and doing environmental justice as it was. The below are two major attacks towards Earth Day.
It has Degraded into Corporate Greenwashing
Greenwash is referred as “disinformation disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image”. Earth Day has been tricked into a day where day where companies making environmentally harmful products repackage their products and make them and the brand appears to be environmentally friendly but in fact they are all mere sugar coatings. In an article, the author listed out some greenwashed Earth Day gimmicks. Example on her list include a “eco-shaped” plastic bottle from Poland Springs, which claimed to contain 30% less plastic than their originals bottle, delivering “eco” potato chips with wasteful Styrofoam packaging, and manufacturing and giving out “eco tote bags”. As the author pointed out, the day, one, has become a shallow marketing opportunity for companies to jump the green bandwagon and try to make extra money using eco-cliché; two, makes corporates to pay less attention onto environmental issues in the other 364 days of the year.
To notice the unbelievably ironic sides of Earth Day, one should take a look into the sponsors of the events. Earth Day New York 2016 is sponsored by Toyota, the automobile company. Although Toyota is producing and promoting electric vehicles, which emits less carbon than conventional vehicles, building electric vehicles hardly makes a companies realistically described as “green”. Toyota also sponsored Earth Day Canada 2016 in launching Toyota Earth Day Scholarship Program, offering 15 scholarships of $5,000 each to university freshman students who have been making efforts in environmental activities . As attractive as it sounds, it makes the world crown Toyota for being environmentally responsible and will not urge people not to purchase cars for a sustainable world.
Other world’s adverse environmental actors such as the giant oil company Chevron and agribusiness corporation Cargill are also spinning their products and brand image to look environmentally friendly on Earth Day. Citing from Chevron’s website, it says, “On Earth Day and every day, Chevron celebrates the work our cities, county, and organizations are doing to improve the environment here in our community.” Chevron says the company has been supporting local community in saving and preserving the environment, while, on the other hand, the business model of the company relies on cutting down rainforests, digging the very bottom oil reserve, contaminating human drinking water and causing climate change.
What is scarier is that, not only the “evil” companies are the one greenwashing. We, the ordinary citizens also greenwash ourselves and our behaviors. We express our “environmental concerns” through slogans and small actions. By putting our can of soft drink into the recycling bin, we are tricked to think that we are being very environmental conscious. In fact we neglected the other actions we are doing, such as eating meat each day and traveling thousands of air mile each year, are also environmentally harmful.
It Does Not Aim at the Big Players
Critics also said that Earth Day is directing people’s invention of solving climate change to a wrong direction. While the Earth Day is more of a public awareness raising campaign, where people are discussing which rubbish bin should you put your soft drink can into, and people are thereby made to believe that they are acting responsibility enough, the Earth Day does not make people to see that, to solve global climate change, what is needed is a rapid change in major economic and political institution in the world. The true solution lies on the hands of the big actors, namely the governments, industries and large corporates such as oil companies, car manufacturing companies and super chain stores. Earth Day failed to engage these actors into the discussion.
Some also say, while Earth Day is motivating green actions, what should be really changed is something of an ideology level: from the perspective of surviving as a species, how we fundamentally choose to reorganize our society . A survey done by The Huffington Post and YouGov assessed how environmental attitudes and behaviors have changed since the first Earth Day in 1970 based on the same survey conducted in 1971. The poll found out that Americans are less concern about the environment now than before. While 63% respondents said that it was “very important” to work to restore and enhance national environment 25% said it was “fairly important” and 8% said it was “not too important”, now, only 39% of the respondents said it was very important and 41% “fairly important” and 16% “not too important”. This is because our environmental movements has been focusing on actions instead of not our fundamental ideology and attitudes, therefore people are never “green inside”.
SO What I Think:
The Earth Day is an excellent intention and is an avant-garde campaign at the beginning. Today, however, it has turned into something different. To companies, it is a marketing opportunity. To some citizens, it is a day of green slogans and green actions. To the other citizens, it is nothing more special than their usual day where they continue their lives as it is. Some are already saying, Earth Day does not matter anymore and it is better not to have Earth Day than to have one.
Regarding the greenwashing criticism, the founder of Earth Day, said in his book, Beyond Earth Day, in 2002: “Greenwashing is not all bad; in fact, it’s a generally positive development. It shows that even the bad guys want to look green to the public. It is a true public relations success, when even your worst opponents claim to share your environmental concerns.” This idea takes me to look at Earth Day in another perspective, that at its minimum function, Earth Day raises the importance of environmental concerns in the business. Nonetheless, putting aside of the money these “evil” companies are making by the green branding, the worrying and dangerous part of it is the mass stop criticizing these companies and believing in that what they do on the day is enough. Nowadays, Earth Day is like a Facebook like: seating in front of the computer, you “like” if you think you are agree with something, while at the same time you are practically doing nothing about it. Earth Day is also like a band-aid on Earth, a pat on the back telling it and ourselves, “we have done something”. This will lead the “green movement” in society a wrong direction.
But We Need Earth Day and We Should Make it Powerful Again
Some say it is better to not have Earth Day. Reminding of its initial success, I think Earth Day still has its value, but improvements are essential to call for bigger attention and reflection and modification are always needed in prolonged social movements.
It is important to understand why Earth Day loses its power in the environmental movement. There are two things that cause the failure. One, it has no impact onto the governments and it failed to urge the big companies to be environmentally responsible. To make Earth Day powerful again, people should organize rally in major cities in the world to tell international companies that we demand environmental ethics in policy-making and business models. Second, Earth Day failed to engage the people who are not concern about the environment. Therefore, it is important that the mass is environmentally literate by constantly educating them in the rest of the 364 days on environmentally responsible practices, so that it becomes a norm. Environmental campaigns should not stay on the stage of teaching people reducing, reusing and recycling. More effective and radical behaviors, such as veganism and reducing flight travels should be encouraged.
Some critics ask, Why Earth Day? Why not Earth Day everyday? To the people who care deeply about our environment, I would respond as a reminder that, for sure it would be ideal if everyday is Earth Day, but it is impossible to have all people being environmentally friendly at this stage in this capitalistic world. Having an Earth Day is already better than none. And with the precedent success of Earth Day, we should make it more powerful so that its initial environmental intention can be achieved and make radical changes to slow down climate change before it is too late.
