An Earth Day Confession

A reminder that none of us are perfect

Happy Earth Day friends!

I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve had an influx of new subscribers over the past couple weeks thanks to being mentioned in two very great stories: this one by

lyz

and this one in The Guardian by Aaron Gell. If you did not come to me by way of either of these stories, you should check them out. Thanks to all these new Subscribes, Cramming for the Apocalypse is as of this writing #3 rising in Climate & Environment on Substack (and for a brief moment over the weekend was #2). I thank you all for being here. If you’re curious about me and what this whole project is about, check out more here. And please spread the word!

With that, I turn to a serious matter that I have a confession to make…

I ordered from Amazon last week. Just writing that gives me the icks. In a moment of weakness when I realized I hadn’t gotten anything for my son’s Easter basket (never mind that we don’t really celebrate Easter other than the consumeristic aspects of it <insert facepalm emoji>), so in a moment of weakness I ordered him a kid’s Sudoku book (his new obsession) and a small LEGO set (the kid needed a Zane Minifig to help complete his Ninjago collection, what can I say?). I did this after calculating my busy schedule with my husband’s work schedule thinking there was no way we could get to the various local stores to procure said Easter Basket loot. So I did it. I pushed that ominous yellow “buy now” button.

My sweet kiddo very excited about his new LEGO set while I feel guilty but not guilty enough to not capture this picture of him enjoying his plastic toys.

Having been boycotting Amazon for months—after years of earnest and pretty effective efforts to reduce our Amazon consumption to only the things we cannot find locally—this felt like a big fail on my part. When my husband saw the charge on our credit card, he called me out. I got defensive, of course. Because I knew very well that with a little bit of effort we could have found these items locally. And after I huffily went upstairs after our conversation, I opened the book I was reading, the beautiful My Oceans by

Christina Rivera (Author)

and started her essay, “Hidden Geographies” about, guess what, all the plastic shit that ends in the ocean and Rivera’s personal loathing of the holidays that implore us to buy a bunch of plastic shit for our kids.

Rivera writes about buying a LEGO set for her son after seeing his interest in creating at his after care program and being compelled to bring that creative spirit home. She writes:

“I gave in. I bought my son a set. I didn’t feel good about it. I didn’t feel good about ordering the Legos from the behemoth online retailer that eats small, local stores for breakfast. I didn’t feel good about the prices marked up double for the brand imprinted on each brick. I didn’t feel good about the box it was packaged in, or the wages of the workers who packed the set, or the fuel that burned in transit of the box to my house, or the UPS guy who had to navigate the ice on my driveway to drop the package on my stoop. All those systems interlocked so smoothly to facilitate my participation n a plastic-indulgent society.

But I did feel good when my son picked up the box, shook its contents, and heard the rattle of 1,070 pieces of a ninja playset boasting a monastery and tea room with ‘hidden knife and chicken traps.’ I felt good when a squeal on teh verge of insanity escaped his mouth and his body quaked with anticipation. There’s little that delights a mother more than seeing her child beside himself in joy. And I suppose someone on a marketing team somewhere has made this calculation.”

The timing of reading this essay was uncanny. It was as if some higher power had planned it to show me how I am so thoroughly part of the capitalist system. How every little choice I make to buy more shit feeds into a system that ends with millions of bits of plastic being dumped into the ocean and that eventually end up in the tummies of baby albatross who then die of said obstructions.

The essay was not just about the moment of weakness that she had, but rather it was a really lovely reflection that documents the push and pull of being an environmentally conscious person living in a society that makes it so easy to consume and the barrage of messaging that makes us feel compelled to do so.

Feels pretty appropriate to have these thoughts just before Earth Day.

I feel so much what Rivera writes about. The problem is me. But also, it’s not. It’s “the system.” I admit, as a climate and environment conscious person, I know better than to impulsively buy shit on Amazon. But also, I am still very much a part of the system and I’m reminded of that every time I’m sucked into one of those Instagram ads that are targeted especially to me and implore me to “buy now before our prices go up because of the tariffs.” I resist most of the time, but not all the time. I brush these moments of weakness off because I do most of my clothes shopping in thrift stores and really do my best to buy local if I can and don’t have a ton of plastic toys and don’t give birthday gift bags filled with tiny little plastic shit. Yet, I am just like every other consumer, drawn into the supposed scarcity and our sense of need of it all. The difference, maybe, is that when that thing arrives on my doorstep I feel guilt. Which doesn’t do much for the planet.

But this system is set up against us. So much so that even the conscious among us are not immune to its draw. We feel guilt because the responsibility has been put on us by the very companies that shove these false feelings of “need” down our throats.

It reminds me of the Scene On Radio Season 5 Series called “The Repair” (a little plug: Scene on Radio is one of my fave podcasts and “The Repair” is a series I continue to go back to). Co-host and award-winning climate journalist known for The Drilled Podcast and Drilled Media, Amy Westervelt does an excellent deep dive into the propaganda machine of the fossil fuel industry and how deep it runs in our system and psyche.

In Episode Four, she reads from a 1944 strategy document titled “The Premise” by Earl Newsom, Standard Oil executive which was the precursor to what we know of as ExxonMobil. She reads from it, after audibly exhaling the words “holy shit”:

“Next to crushing the Axis, and avoiding runaway inflation while we are doing it, the most important problem confronting us is to keep the American people convinced of the intrinsic social and economic worth of the free enterprise system and of its superiority over statism, so that the people will be determined to remove unnecessary governmental controls and reestablish competitive, democratic, free enterprise capitalism when the war is won.”

She explains that the document goes on to discuss the strategy for oil companies to work together—but not make it look like it was working together—to prop up “free enterprise” without actually saying “free enterprise.”

“Connecting the good life to fossil fuel use has been and continues to be a chronic, paradigmatic element of American Petroleum Institute, the fossil fuel propaganda efforts,” says environmental sociologist, Bob Brulle whose voice gives context throughout the story.

The episode goes on to relate how the oil and gas industries have led the way on essentially gaslighting the capitalist West they should consume more because that is patriotic. This propaganda would evolve over time to counteract the environmental movement set off by Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader to basically invent greenwashing. By way of greenwashing, the fossil fuel propaganda machine put the responsibility on individual consumers for cleaning up the planet, thus taking the attention off them.

The whole episode—nay series—is worth a full listen. But I write all of this not to absolve myself of my Easter-fueled Amazon slip, rather to make sure I’m reminding myself who is the enemy. It’s the companies making all the plastic crap. While I have a soft spot for the LEGO company because it truly is the most enduring toy that keeps on giving (I mean it’s pretty cool that LEGO from my era fit perfectly with today’s LEGO), there are ways we don’t have to participate in the constant desire for newness of LEGO (e.g., I could have very well gone to Bricks & Minifigs and bought a used Ninjago LEGO set). And also attempting to have conversations about capitalism and consumerism with one’s kids which can be tricky when also trying to convince them they don’t actually need that one new LEGO set (see last week’s post). But also, you can take them to a climate protest and explain who is the wrongdoer.

Okay it’s off my chest. I’ll still feel guilty and will hopefully remember that guilt enough to keep me from buying something I feel like I need but definitely don’t the next time a very targeted Instagram ad comes across my feed. But I will also emphatically shake my fist in the air and yell “Argh, damn you capitalism!” and then maybe look up another way to get involved in the holding the true ass holes accountable.

Nonetheless, I hope today is one where you are able to take a moment to revel in a bit of joy about our incredible planet. Guilt has its uses, but so does joy (another reminder for myself). I will hopefully let go of my guilt for a day and enjoy this beautiful Earth we call home.