| This is the first newsletter from Apocalypse Soon, The New Republic’s new climate vertical, launching next week.
Today marks the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day—the holiday The New Republic loves to hate.
Back in 2008, Bradford Plumer pointed out that the anti-consumerist holiday green activists had hoped for in 1970 had become an opportunity for corporate greenwashing: a day on which carbon-emitting, landfill-filling companies could hawk organic editions of decidedly unsustainable wares. Earth Day in recent years has felt like an annual reminder of the tragic failure of the environmental movement to change our trajectory. The dissonance has felt more unbearable each year, as the threats to the planet grow. As Emily Atkin noted on Earth Day three years ago, the holiday’s original organizers got a lot right, bringing social justice awareness to a movement that had historically been rather white and elite. But that’s only made subsequent Earth Days feel more frustrating.
This year, Earth Day is being celebrated amid a global pandemic. In the past few weeks, we’ve published a series of pieces about how the coronavirus—while a catastrophe in its own right—is also a troubling dry run for the climate crises ahead. These crises will feel just as abrupt as this one did. They may well spur further pandemics. And like the coronavirus, they are going to hit marginalized American communities—as well as poorer countries already mired in debt—particularly hard. We may all be on this planet together, but we will not all suffer the same way.
It’s understandable to feel overwhelmed by it all. But as Bill McKibben argued in the Los Angeles Times yesterday, channeling the frustration, anger, and pain of the present moment is the only hope for a future Earth Day we can feel good about. In the coming weeks, Apocalypse Soon will publish essays from a diverse array of climate scientists, writers, and activists about what’s helped them process their grief and anxiety, and the ways they’ve found to harness it. Let me know if there’s anyone in particular you’d like to hear from.
—Heather Souvaine Horn, Deputy Editor | 