Earth Day
Today is Earth Day. Would that that actually meant something…
Earth Day was created in 1970 as a direct political challenge. Wisconsin’s Senator Gaylord Nelson wanted the US government to do what government is supposed to do — protect its people and lands from rapacious business. He created Earth Day and organized the first demonstrations across the country to force the hand of politicians. And it worked. A few months after that first day of mass protest, the EPA was created along with many of our foundational acts of environmental protection…
… most of which have been walked back, defunded, and effectively destroyed, especially in the last year. I had a friend at the EPA, working in Superfund monitoring. One might think protecting Americans from lethal toxins is a good use of taxpayer monies. Apparently, DOGE’s chainsaw crew thought otherwise. Those employed prior to this administration were largely fired, to be replaced by people who had no intention of enforcing environmental regulation. To make matters worse, under the Big Ugly Bill, funding was cut by nearly 60%.
So last spring and summer, there was furious activity to try to complete whatever they could. My friend was fired in April, but she kept working for a couple months and filed her last reports through a former colleague who was still employed. Until August…
I get the feeling that my friend’s story was not exceptional. There were many who tried to keep working to protect the millions of Americans who live near Superfund sites. But there is only so much you can do with a skeleton staff and less than half of your budget. Today, Superfund monitoring is essentially no longer happening. This should terrify America… except there is so much terror, it’s hard to notice the silent killers.
But it must be said that Americans are terrible at noticing anything… or making connections. This is weighing on me on Earth Day. Because it seems that we are incapable of connecting what we do with what is destroying the Earth. And what we do every day erases everything we aspire to do on Earth Day. Let me share some examples from the rather crunchy state of Vermont.
In break rooms around the state, it is not unusual to have a large recycling bin under a counter that holds a Keurig “coffee” maker. Why even bother with recycling if you’re generating waste on that level? Plastic k-cup trash for every brewed mug. To make gross coffee! The first step in the three R’s is reduce, right? Adding more waste is the opposite of reduce, reuse, recycle, regardless of that bin. But to make it worse, almost none of those small plastic containers ever get recycled. And we all know this!
Then there are the people who will loudly decry the social costs of this system. Things like Amazon Prime drivers who have to pee in bottles and warehouse workers that wear adult diapers because they are not allowed bathroom breaks. Or the predatory practices of Amazon Prime taking money by subterfuge and delivering almost nothing in return — except deliveries… And yet these people still shop with Amazon! For everything! I’m not just talking about buying things that are unavailable locally or large and bulky things that you can’t physically get from a shop to your house. I’m talking toilet paper, made locally, and yet shipped from an Amazon warehouse god knows how distant. Or socks, again made locally by a prominent Vermont business, but purchased online from Amazon rather than going to a shop — or even to the manufacturer’s website!
Then there’s the recent moaning about the increasing costs at the gas pump and the imminent rationing of oil. But businesses insist on keeping office workers in the office rather than reverting to work-from-home policies to reduce commuting. And then there’s spring break… I don’t even know how they are affording this, but there are still people flying. Purely for recreation! Are you insane?!? Even if the stories coming out of the Eastern Hemisphere fail to instill a bit of caution, shouldn’t the exorbitant costs put the brakes on your spending? I heard of one family going to Europe for a month next week. This, while the EU is trying desperately to buy jet fuel from any market. Because they have maybe a couple weeks of supply left. What is going to happen to that family? No idea. And they have no idea also.
Because none of this is supposed to apply to Americans. We wag our fingers and shake our heads and signal with our own virtuous recycling bins. But we don’t have to follow our own advice. We don’t have to act in accordance with what we believe. We don’t even have to acknowledge that there are connections between our actions and the degradation and destruction that are being heaped on this planet.
I’m in a grumpy mood, to be sure. Maybe things are better elsewhere… only it doesn’t seem like it. It seems like most people are content to channel all their grievances into demonstrations and protests and virtue signaling, rather than actually doing things that would bring about change. Most of which would be beneficial to themselves as much as the planet! It infuriates me…
Recently, I saw a headline asking why GenZ seemingly lost the will to protest. Remember all the activist kids of five, ten years ago? Greta Thunberg spitting “blah, blah, blah” at world leaders? The Friday climate strikes? What happened to all that? Yes, the kids are adults now, and they have no leisure time or disposable funds to skip work for protesting… But also, I think many of them learned the hard way just how useless that sort of activism is. Protest does little except make us all feel better. Indeed, protest that involves travel and other spending actually does harm, it supports the system we are protesting. In any case, the climate strikes accomplished nothing.
You know what the GenZ kids I know are doing now? Most of them are doing actual things. They are very active in the neighborhood watches and de-escalation groups. They make up the majority of VPIRG, the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, as well as a large chunk of 350Vermont. But they are also doing the invisible leg work. On the weekends, they are making community gardens, urban farms, or just helping elderly neighbors keep up their private gardens. On their lunch breaks, they are knitting mittens and hats for the homeless. They are working in food banks and in gleaning programs alongside their forty to fifty hours of weekly wage work. They are organizing ride share programs and compost hauling. They’re teaching themselves how to cook, how to preserve and store food, how to darn socks and make their own clothing, how to fix everything from computers to leaky faucets. And they are very active with all the volunteer and non-profit organizations centered on providing homes and shelter to Vermonters, from Habitat for Humanity to the ReSource. These young folks are stepping up to take care of Vermont.
And they are not shopping on Amazon.
These are the quiet things that make a difference, that will protect us from the silent killers. Wendell Berry calls this sort of activism stewardship. On Earth Day, it might be good to learn from the kids and become good stewards for our small parts of the planet. Time to make the connection between what we say and what we do — and then do the necessary good work. Time to put the signs down and take the concrete steps toward real changes. Time to be stewards. Because this is our home. It is the only home humans have. And the way to make home is to take care of it.
The Wednesday Word
for 22 April 2026
stewardship
What does stewardship mean to you? Think about it. If you’d like, send me a quick poem or story… or just a few thoughts. If you really have something to say, maybe enter my Wednesday Word contest on AllPoetry.
©Elizabeth Anker 2026
By My Solitary Hearth 