Happy Earth Day 2024, everybody.
This is the moment where I post a pretty picture. Below, is your pretty picture.
Another year, more single-use plastics. Another year, more crypto using more electricity worldwide. Another year, yet more neighbors (or ex-neighbors) throwing their mattresses in the dumpster that could be recycled for free. Another year, let’s build some useless, ugly, trucks, that idiots can shoot with a 12 gauge, and let’s build electric cars that do nothing to get regular middle-class people to actually drive an electric car. Another year, how about we build this unimaginably power-intensive, non-working, program that helps you save 5 seconds writing an email (or a blog post?).
Of course, this is me being cranky, feeling that this day has become more about branding than change . I have been here before, and everybody wanted to argue with my past Earth Day pessimism. Any one of us can use less water, conserve energy, recycle (of course, you can mostly just recycle what your trash company can make money recycling), but with the larger damage to our ecosystem so far beyond any one of us, it feels pretty hopeful.
And there is the fact that per capita, I have ~ 30 years left as a sentient being, so there is the feeling that it will be the next generation’s problem to deal with.
But with all that said, I sincerely hope that momentum can build to take all of these seriously, before the worst effects of climate change are a normal course of life.
I will close with an interesting, positive (?), note. I read recently that the Devil’s Hole Pupfish, one of the species that helped create the Endangered Species Act, has had something of a revival when it was feared near extinction. It seems that recent flash flooding that washed mud and debris into its keepsake aquifer, somehow may have improved the nutrient base in the water, helping these little guys thrive.
More Earth Day
The Commercialization of Earth Day
Why I Hate Earth Day: By An Environmental Writer
The Climate Catastrophe Is Already Here
T.M. Schultze is a San Diego-based photographer, traveller, and writer. He writes, photographs, and draws things of the outdoors that have inspired humans for thousands of years. He co-authored the Photographer’s Guide to Joshua Tree Park which can be purchased here.