Why I hate Earth Day
How a career in activism soured me on "raising the salience" of climate issues
In 2004, I was twenty-three years old and just beginning to give serious consideration to what I will do with my life. It seems like at least three lifetimes ago, but I distinctly remember seeing Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth when it came out that year.
A lot of readers won’t remember An Inconvenient Truth. Or maybe they think Al Gore is an out-of-touch fuddy-duddy from an obsolete past. Well, let me tell you: it was a HUGE cultural moment. Everyone talked about it everywhere, and back then these moments lasted more like three months, rather than our current 36-hour outrage cycle.
If you can imagine, this was before climate change had devolved into an outright partisan issue, before “denialism” became half the country’s defining posture. Heck, the GOP still had its own climate change proposal—cap-and-trade. Anyway, those were the days.
I was working as a journalist when the movie came out, covering politics for the Albuquerque Journal. There was a clear lesson for journalists here, which was that fairness and balance aren’t about both sides. If ninety-nine scientists say one thing and one scientist says another, the story should read, “The overwhelming consensus of science is…” and not “Some scientists say this, while other scientists say that.” I brought this lesson directly into my reporting.
But An Inconvenient Truth influenced me in other, longer-lasting ways:
It showed me climate change is probably the most serious long-term problem humans are dealing with.
It showed me that the issue is not going away in my lifetime.
It convinced me that I should devote at least some portion of my life to somehow helping to fix this issue.
Yes, all in all, the movie was a wake-up call. It had its intended effect.
And then everything went downhill from there.