“The original founders of Earth Day literally borrowed pages from the then-happening civil rights movement to engage in righteous civil disobedience, righteous group mass action, to have humanity look at environmental degradation and the degradation of lives of individuals,” Mair said. Founded in 1970, amid rising awareness of industry’s unchecked pollution of the air and water, its organizers aimed to apply the lessons of civil-right activism to the environmental movement. “ We need to make people uncomfortable, to shatter that convenience.”Įarth Day wasn’t supposed to be a corny celebration of green living.

“Right now people might take a styrofoam cup and paint a planet on it with paint that might be tainted with lead,” said Aaron Mair, the Sierra Club’s first black president. The president of one such leading environmental group agrees. “It has turned into a device for the mostly white male-led nonprofit industrial complex to raise money for causes they don’t have a plan for,” he said, citing the amorphous fight against climate change and general environmental degradation. Earth Day is a manifestation of that disconnect-an event that, like much of the environmental world, focuses too much on making white people feel good about recycling and driving Pruises than helping those suffering from environmental injustice. Rogers-Wright derides the “so-called movement” because, he says, the nation’s leading environmental groups too often neglect environmental justice communities. For a disproportionate number of low-income, minority communities across America, Earth Day will be just another day of living downwind of fossil fuel power plants, which President Donald Trump has promised to further deregulate. The people of Flint, Michigan will continue to drink tap water through a filter, because tens of thousands of city pipes are tainted with lead. Meanwhile, in North Dakota, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe will brace for the flow of oil alongside their sacred land, thanks to the recent completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. And countless Americans will mark the day by going for a long run or practicing yoga outdoors, as if they don’t already do that every weekend.

Bars will host “green-conscious” tap takeovers and donate the proceeds to tree planting (or, in some cases, not donate anything at all). Businesses will convene “ swap shops” where people can exchange old clothes and other miscellany they don’t want anymore. Zoos and museums will throw “ parties for the planet,” complete with composting workshops. This Saturday, on Earth Day, children will paint their faces at mini carnivals and teenagers will pick up trash in public parks.

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