Quick and Important Thoughts For "Earth Day" ... (First: Why Not Earth Week or Earth Month?)
As we indicated last week, Earth Day shouldn’t just be one day of observance. We’ve reached the tipping point already where what was once viewed as abnormal weather or aberrant climate conditions are now pretty much the norm and putting us on a path towards permanent planetary destruction. We can, however, still avoid that if we’re putting a sense of urgency around our collective life-support system in ways that are robustly transformational and structural. This leads us to several thoughts on this annual Earth observance day …
Earth Day should have already turned into Earth Week - which, thankfully, we’re seeing the current Biden administration doing through a bold Earth Week kick off announcement today first announcing $7 billion in “solar for all” investment that will put an emphasis on clean energy installation for and use by disadvantaged communities. That’s been a big part of the problem with clean and renewable energy implementation: We keep waiting for market-driven capitalism, which created climate crisis in the first place, to solve the problem. As a result, the only people, households and communities largely using clean energy solutions are the ones who can afford it at a time wealth inequality keeps expanding. That’s not going to work. The key to reaching a sustainable future is creating public policy or equitable governing solutions offering the opportunity for everyone to access clean and renewable energy solutions.
We know climate crisis and its evil cousins of global ocean-gutting plastic and PFAS/permanent chemical destruction remain existential threats to us all. Yet, why aren’t we having a serious, ongoing public discussion about those threats in such a way that prompts whole communities to move in big ways? Why is Earth Day still just a day? It definitely has a lot to do with irresponsible lack of media coverage on what’s already been established as an apocalyptic threat to us all. Media Matters Evlondo Cooper offers the most comprehensive, piercing and troubling analysis of scaled back corporate media coverage of climate crisis, climate solutions and environmental justice …
2023 was the hottest year on record, and it was not even close. Testifying to this calamitous milestone were record-breaking extreme weather events and a record number of billion-dollar disasters — from searing heat waves to droughts, torrential rains to raging wildfires and plumes of smoke.
During this pivotal moment, however, corporate broadcast networks — ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox Broadcasting Co. — scaled back their climate coverage by 25%, representing a marked decrease in 2023 from the improvements made in 2021 and 2022.
The downturn in 2023 highlights the growing divide between the urgent demand for comprehensive climate reporting and the shrinking news media attention it receives.
That explains the dearth of public discussion and policymaker follow-up. Media outlets aren’t thinking about it as a priority, even though climate crisis is about the destruction of the spaces we live in. The public, therefore, doesn’t view it as a priority and isn’t placing pressure on their elected officials to do much about it as they should. That has to change.
Earth Day - which should be Earth Week to Earth Month to Earth Year - really should translate into a clarion call for organized legal and public policy movements against the fossil fuel and chemical companies that have caused the current mess we find ourselves in. This requires a massive public call for transformational change - not cute public service announcements on recycling, less-driving and gardening tips that puts most of the onus on individual members of the public. We do bear lots of responsibility (like, yes, stop littering). But true change occurs when its moved by political and structural forces. We just don’t see that happening at this moment and we need it.
Political and structural change could lead to major transformational moments such as the banning of the traditional fuel passenger vehicle - which, in the U.S., accounts for nearly 30 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and 10 percent globally. That could open up the transition to electric vehicles or a needed expansion of mass transit that could dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions, climate crisis impacts and the costs to those traveling.
We’re also wondering why there hasn’t yet been a major movement that puts a greater and more urgent focus on dangerously high levels of methane emissions. Here’s how the International Energy Agency assesses it …
Methane is responsible for around 30% of the rise in global temperatures since the industrial revolution, and rapid and sustained reductions in methane emissions are key to limit near-term warming and improve air quality.
Two key characteristics determine the impact of different greenhouse gases on the climate: the length of time they remain in the atmosphere and their ability to absorb energy. Methane has a much shorter atmospheric lifetime than carbon dioxide (CO2) – around 12 years compared with centuries – but absorbs much more energy while it exists in the atmosphere.
As the MIT Climate Portal notes …
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that about 6.5 million metric tons of methane leak from the oil and gas supply chain each year — around 1 percent of total natural gas production. At this rate, methane leaks would account for around 10 percent of natural gas’s contribution to climate change, and CO2 emissions for the other 90 percent.
But other scientists have reported much larger figures for methane leaks. In a 2022 study focused on gas production in New Mexico, a group of Stanford researchers estimated that leaks equated to more than 9 percent of all production in the area, based on aerial surveys. A 2023 study suggested methane emissions were 70 percent higher than U.S. government figures from 2010 to 2019. Plata says there’s no current consensus on the magnitude of methane leaks.
Lastly, Earth Day and the public conversation around these kinds of observances should be much more diverse and equitable in their scope. Too much of the conversation and the display of Earth Day still, after all these years, makes it racially confined to White progressives versus the inclusion of Black, Brown, Indigenous and other marginalized and underserved communities of color - particularly in low-income circumstances - that are hit hardest by climate crisis and environmental destruction impacts. Yet, the classic branding of Earth Day still positions it as a rather White progressive and middle-class holiday, which creates the false impression that environmental issues are not BIPOC priorities.