Capitalism Stole Earth Day. Let’s Take It Back.

I’m a huge fan of Earth Day, but if I’m being real, it breaks my heart a little each year. Somewhere along the way, what started in 1970 as one of America’s most successful protests ever has turned into a massive marketing opportunity for companies to sell more stuff and flaunt their half-hearted initiatives. I’m not a cynical person, but it’s hard to ignore: Earth Day has become all gooey with virtue signaling, greenwashing, free tote bags and stickers, and social media posts featuring new sustainable products to buy.

To address these Earth Day blues, let’s remember the holiday’s radical origins and original intent, and then get some fresh perspective from thoughtful environmentalists who do their damndest to care for our planet every day of the year.

An Extremely Brief History of Earth Day

Back in 1970, there was no Environmental Protection Agency, no Clean Air Act or Clean Water Act. There were no laws or regulations to hold companies accountable for pumping out as much pollution as they wanted. The lack of environmental laws angered a Democratic senator from Wisconsin named Gaylord Nelson, who forced the issue into the national agenda. He hatched  a plan to simultaneously host hundreds of  teach-ins about the burgeoning environmental crisis on college campuses across the country.

Nelson tapped Denis Hayes, a 25-year old graduate student at Harvard Kennedy School to lead the effort. Hayes dropped out of Harvard and reached out to college campuses and every environmental group he could think of. They picked April 22 for the teach-in, because it fell during college spring break. Some contemporaries regard that first event as the birth of the modern environmental movement. Twenty million people—all concerned with protecting the environment and challenging President Nixon to take action—turned out to create one of the biggest political protests in history.

Just months after that first Earth Day, Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency. In the same year, Congress significantly amended early pollution legislation and passed the Clean Air Act as we know it today.  The Clean Water Act followed in 1972.

What strikes me most about this remarkable cascade of green action is that it all stemmed from disparate communities, some intent on saving whales, some focused on air pollution or pesticides, some concerned with toxic water contaminating fish, coming together under a common umbrella—the environment—to make themselves heard.

Earth Day Is About Community

To me, Earth Day is a call to action and a time to practice behaviors that will spread throughout my daily life and my circles of influence. But more importantly, it’s a good time to reflect on the power of community and public outcry. Amazing things happen when people rally together.

In that spirit, I gathered three activists to talk about what Earth Day means to them, how it has evolved, and what we need it to become in order to solve our climate crisis.

Spencer Scott is a climate scientist and educator and co-founder of Solar Punk Farms, a regenerative farming community in northern California.

Pattie Gonia is an environmental drag queen, musician, and co-founder of The Outdoorist Oath, a nonprofit that inspires and teaches people to take action for planet, inclusion, and adventure.

Kiana Kazemi is a data scientist and the CEO of Beaker, which uses AI to to create sustainability ratings and reports for brands and consumers. She is also the co-founder of the nonprofit Intersectional Environmentalist.

OUTSIDE: Let’s start with the good things about Earth Day as it currently exists.
Spencer Scott: At its best, Earth Day is a gateway for people—especially kids—to enter into a relationship with better ecological behaviors. These big national holidays can help people get interested in a concept and drive them down the awareness funnel. But it can’t just be a day.

Pattie Gonia: For me, Earth Day is about getting the heck outside and falling in love with this planet. I think right now we’re asking so many people to fight for our planet and forgetting a very important first step of connection. When we realize just how incredible nature is we know just how worth it this planet is to fight for. Every minute of time we can get outdoors is worth it. And I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to be sad outside, so my mental health is an added plus, too.

Kiana Kazemi: Earth Day, which turned into Earth Week, and has now become Earth Month, was once the largest civic demonstration in history. I think it’s a wonderful time to celebrate that in 1970, 20 million people in America came together to show their love for the earth and demand we take care of it. These days, I usually spend Earth Day and the rest of April speaking to different audiences about sustainability. While I don’t think this cross-sector interest should be siloed just to this month, I agree with Spencer. Conversations held around this time can be an important entryway to the environmental movement for those that otherwise wouldn’t have had access.

What’s your biggest beef with Earth Day?
PG: Capitalism, and how companies have co-opted Earth Day. Over the past few years, companies have made a direct effort to place the blame of climate change on us as individuals. The very idea of carbon footprint was invented by an ad agency for a big oil client that wanted to blame-shift the deteriorating environment away from them and onto us. And yes, we all must be mindful about our individual actions and strive to do better.

But we also need to understand who the real planet killers are: the big corporations and countries with military industrial complexes like the U.S. who are the world’s largest polluters. They are knowingly polluting and dropping bombs that are killing people and creating an environmental and societal disaster. This is why I urge anyone who wants to take action for climate to see the undeniable link to social justice. What’s happening in Gaza right now isn’t just a humanitarian crisis, it’s an environmental crisis, too.

SS: That’s true, and Earth Day has become a month of massive greenwashing in the corporate world. The inside joke in the climate space is that everyone’s busiest month is April. That’s when our phones start ringing off the hook because every corporation has to show they care about the earth and check that box. The same thing happens during Pride Month (June) with the LGBTQ+ community. We suddenly become very popular. But what we need are long term behavior and values shifts on the corporate level and in individuals so that Earth-centered actions happen all year long until they become an integral part of who we are.

KK: One of my main gripes about Earth Day, and corporate sustainability in general, is that so often the conversation stops at the marketing department. Companies understand that consumers care about sustainability, but instead of embodying the true values of sustainability, they make vague, misleading statements with no action to back them up. I believe Earth Day should be a celebration of our planet and all the ways we coexist in harmony with nature, a day for organizations to celebrate the positive environmental impact they have, and the rest of the year should be dedicated to true environmental action that can then be celebrated the next year.

PG:  Kiana is so right about marketing. It sets us up to make the wrong choices so that big companies can profit. People are rightly concerned about the safety of their drinking water, so they buy plastic water bottles day in and day out. We could have alternative solutions like safe public drinking water available across the U.S. that sets us up to waste less, but it’s almost like America, which created capitalism, keeps profiting by designing our collective destruction of the planet. Funny how that works, huh?

How do we demand climate action?
KK: I often hear about the importance of “voting with your dollars,” and there’s so much validity and significance to that, however I believe that we can take it many steps beyond that. For example, so many of us work for large companies that have big environmental impacts, or exist in institutions (for example colleges) that invest in fossil fuels, and we believe that because we’re not at the top we don’t have the power to make shifts. I want us to all challenge that narrative.

We each bring our skills, creativity, and humanity to our workplaces, and that holds power. Companies are built by people, and if enough people speak up, companies will have to change. A great example of employee activism is Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa at Amazon. They created the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice group, which garnered support from 30 percent of shareholders and pushed Amazon to commit to becoming net zero by 2040.

PG: We take who we are (our identities), what we’re good at (our special skills and talents), leverage our connections (to groups other people wouldn’t have access to) and fight for what we believe in–a more healthy planet.

I am about progress not perfection. We need to take pressure off of ourselves to be perfect so we can take more action for our planet in daily, doable, sustainable ways. And hey, I struggle with this every day. It’s hard to make good, local choices when convenience is king, or you’re living life on the road. You don’t have to be perfect. Just aim for progress. Read, learn, ask questions, and strive for daily 1 percent changes that can snowball into something bigger.

We demand action by voting for politicians that are supporting climate action and extended producer responsibility laws. We vote with our dollars by not supporting the major corporations that are complicit and responsible for funding the harm on our planet. And most importantly, we don’t do climate action alone—we collaborate with other people. Our solutions are stronger when we work together.

SS: Community is key. That’s what Solar Punk Farms, the nonprofit I started with my husband, is all about. In a way, you can think of our farm as a place where it’s always Earth Day. Our goal is to build community around the process of regenerating our local ecosystems and the feeling of being a positive contributor to its health. We try to bring as much joy to it as possible so that ecological values become intertwined with our culture. Like Pattie said, we’re stronger together. And that’s what we need to in order to build the new systems we need to replace the old.

How will you be spending April 22 this year?
KK: Having been an environmentalist for most of my life, I treat most days like they’re Earth Day. I try to start and end my days with a little bit of time outdoors, even if just five minutes of walking around the block. And while this Earth Day I’ll probably be working hard on my new company Beaker, which helps brands increase their environmental transparency through data, I’ll still make sure to get to my sunset walk around the neighborhood!

SS: We’re celebrating the day by having 15 friends to our farm for a work/play event. We’ll be planting some trees and making 15 raised garden beds to donate to people in our neighborhood so they can start growing some food and get invested in regenerative practices.

PG: I’m celebrating Earth Day by getting the hell outside. Then, later in the day, I’ll be performing for 600 people at SAVE HER! our series of environmental drag shows. It’s going to be a very gay and nature filled day!

Doing right by the planet can make you happier, healthier, and—yes—wealthier. Outside’s head of sustainability, Kristin Hostetter, explores small lifestyle tweaks that can make a big impact. Write to her at climateneutral-ish@outsideinc.com.