Earth Day

This week, Imran Khan broke the world record in having 160 thousand people listening in on Twitter Space. That is the largest human crowd in Twitter history. This was April 21, 2022. On April 22, 1970, more than 20 million people poured onto the streets across the United States protesting what was labeled as Earth Day. That makes the largest single-day protest in human history. These two events highlight the entire story of the human role into the degradation of not only our environment but the denial of the undeniable truth as well.

Given the political events unfolding in Pakistan currently, Imran Khan remains stubbornly the most popular leader in the country. Records of crowds protesting and marching against the ouster of their leader are being established with every new protest. The sad irony is that those who have the privilege to affect the change in Pakistan are watching it and stubbornly denying the truth.

In 1970, a group of students gathered at Columbia University in New York to listen to Denis Hayes, one of the lead activists behind the Earth Day, talk about his plans for the Earth Day protests. Hayes and his partner rebranded the previously nationwide environmental teach-in label to Earth Day. In 1972, just two years after the first Earth Day, the Standard Oil of New Jersey was rebranded as Exxon Corporation and Exxon became the unified title of the previously individual smaller companies. The 70s was also the time when scientists at Exxon had concluded that the consumption of fossil fuel, the very product they sold, was causing enormous carbon emissions that were heating the planet. Exxon decision-makers, however, chose to keep a tight lid on that information. Noise has been known to break the silence. In this case, however, the reverse is true.

The Earth Day protesters have been making noise about the environmental issues, the oil giants have shifted from denying the issue to casting doubt, dividing the people based on behaviour shaming, delaying the action based on fears of economic effects, and so forth. Speaking of truth denial, the one sad truth that cannot be denied is that denialists always win. Whether it is about the denial of Imran Khan being the most popular Pakistani leader or the human caused carbon emissions, the denialists whose interests remain alive in a world of lies have been winning this game.

Earth Day is celebrated every year on April 22. An interesting fact remains that humans have caused more carbon emissions due to the burning of fossil fuel after the birth of this day in 1970. And that really begs the question: does awareness about a problem always lead to a solution too? Is awareness just a low lying fruit? Climate change has almost become part of pop culture, however, Exxon is not out of business. As a matter of fact, in 1998, Exxon and Mobil came together as ExxonMobil in a $73.7 billion merger making it the largest oil company in the US and the third largest in the entire world.

That was almost 3 decades after the largest single-day protest in human history against the consumption of the very product these ever fattening corporations sold. Furthermore, the merger was around the time when Al Gore was making noise about climate change and had a great chance of becoming the US president.

It is a baffling problem because usually it is the lack of awareness about a problem that defies executing any solutions. In this case, the awareness and knowledge are very much there. Earth Day comes and goes once a year but oil giants are a permanent everyday existence in our lives. The loud occurrence of Earth Day is no match for the silent influence of the oil giants in our lives. Perhaps awareness is not the needed arsenals against the oil giants. Perhaps, it is not the oil giants that are the villains here. Perhaps, it is us.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 24^th, 2022.

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