Read my latest story, "A Tale of Two Birthdays", at 52|250.

In theory, having a day set aside to focus on environmental issues isn’t a bad thing. I think I would have enjoyed its 1970 form. It often seems, however, that celebrating Earth Day is a bit like giving your assistant a bouquet on Secretary’s Day in lieu of a living wage and health insurance. Indeed, when you Google ”Earth Day sale” or “Earth day products”, it starts to look like deducting the cost of the flowers from your assistant’s paycheck. How much water did it take to make that T-shirt? Are you going to recycle that card when you’re finished displaying it on your refrigerator (which, incidentally, is set a bit colder than necessary and contains way too much meat)?

Where the analogy breaks down, however, is that as much as we talk about saving the Earth, environmentalism is really about saving ourselves. It’s about maintaining a habitable environment. Of course, as the work of the Goldman Environmental Prize winners highlights, it is the poor who suffer the worst consequences of environmental degradation first, which makes it even more difficult to convince the wealthy, who are responsible for most of the harmful consumption, to change their habits.

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