Our Power, Our Planet: Earth Day’s 2025 Theme Decoded
https://www.earthday.org/our-power-our-planet-earth-days-2025-theme-decoded/
The above is the title of an article/webpage I have not read (know nothing of other than the title I just pasted in above) that was offered for consideration. So I will consider the first paragraph (I will highlight, copy and paste it below as soon as I finish typing this parenthetical).
Every year, over 1 billion people across the planet observe Earth Day on and around April 22. They hold trash cleanups, they write to their elected officials demanding change, they hold vigils, organize marches, hold educational events, art competitions, nature walks, and more.
Okay, let’s fact check claims. On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day, which was about 10% of the U.S. (not global) population (203,392,031) at the time. This made it the largest mass demonstration in American history, both before and after 1970 (vastly larger per capita than all recent XR global protests put together).
I was there as a first-year community college student and I would have been counted as a participant just for being there on the streets as an observer. I am not now, however, nor have I ever been, an environmentalist.
I was taking a class in biology (I wanted to learn about life-on-earth biology), and the instructor was an environmentalist drum beater who used his pulpit to proclaim (for about 20 minutes of each class) his belief-based certitudes. He had to go through the motions of teaching biology, but I found the situation intolerable and withdrew from the class (to fact check, see archives of Allan Hancock Community College).
My mentor by proxy (of his books/articles), Howard T. Odum systems ecologist, was driven to understand humanity’s predicament of overshoot that the Great Acceleration of 1950 had locked in, which put modern humans in the position of dinosaurs before the Chicxulub meteor hit.
Being distracted by clothed apes intent on politicizing their imagined (not understood) issues, even if some facts were likely correct (per evidence as distinct from prattle of interest), was too much of a distraction.
Making sure you turned off the lights before leaving a room would no more save the planet from modern humans than recycling or using a stainless steel straw carried in a bamboo case (or driving an electric car).
H.T. Odum Transcript: Interview from 1981 & Commencement 1978
Okay, so next paragraph:
Every Earth Day has a designated theme, which we are honored to set. In 2023 it was Invest in Our Planet, encouraging business, politicians, and the public to rally behind climate-friendly choices. In 2024, we persuaded millions of you to stand up to plastics’ harmful impact on human health with Planet vs. Plastics. It helped to persuade the U.S government to change their mind on capping global plastic production, which they now support, because of your hands-on activism.
Invest in OUR Planet?
Consider that “OUR” world is not the world system:
US Secretary of State: “Why have you come to our planet?”
Klaatu: “Your planet?”
US Secretary of State: “Yes. This is our planet.”
Klaatu: “No. It is not.”
I guess Earth Day supporters didn’t get this memo.
It’s all about “encouraging business, politicians, and the public to” do more than serve their short-term self interests as believed in, right? Ending climate change is thinkable, to be believed in (or not). But the Anthropocene mass extinction event is NOT to think about, the event all XR supporters are part of and fail to address, as the 20% of US citizens in 1970 failed, and meanwhile the pace of planetary destruction will not end until its cause ends.
“… In 2024, we persuaded millions of you to stand up to plastics’ harmful impact on human health….” Perhaps millions of today’s 8.1 billion were persuaded to ‘Like’ or ‘Clap’ for standing up, but over a billion is 13% of all humans, or 22% of adults who could protest, which is vastly more than some number of “millions of you” claimed, more than 1,100 million times more. The condition of being a political animal (pundit) seems to mean a writer can’t do the math anymore (or never could).
Eight point one billion humans on this our planet of the humans? So, what’s the problem? Those who think there might someday be a problem just want to kill black babies (we have an under population problem, right? So if you think continued population growth in Africa is a problem, you must be a racist, right?).
Plastics (or climate change) and human health? Per today’s BBC headlines, microplastics have not yet killed a significant number of modern humans. Sorry about that. Not good news for 10 year olds (or other species).
That the U.S. government now supports the proposed policy of capping global plastic production (thanks to the hands-on activism of people who truly care about the planet…) is good to know. Meanwhile, the pace of….
The message of Earth Day 1970 was delivered by Pogo Possum. I got the message. The environmentalists (or politicians and public) didn’t.
So, 54 years of hands-on activism, and the new message?
For 2025, our 55th anniversary year, we are focused on supporting the tripling of renewable energy by 2030 with our theme Our Power, Our Planet, which is championing solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, and tidal generated energy.
Why? To grow the economy so we can end poverty and allow all 9 billion humans coming soon to a planet near you to be able to equitably buy stainless steel straws and drive electric cars.
‘Adding to the energy supply is like adding to the food supply, it leads to increased population and increased per capita consumption — not the other way around.’ — Chris Bystroff
We’ve been adding to the food supply, via agriculture (turning ecosystems mostly into unsustainable agroecosystems) for 12k years. Meanwhile, the pace of regional destruction spread like a metastatic cancer from one cell to millions.
There are about 1 million cell clusters, or acini, in the human pancreas and between 15 and 100 pancreas cells per acini. So figure 57 x 1 million cells in one pancreas, an order of magnitude more than there were humans on the planet (the one that wasn’t theirs for the taking) 12k years ago.
It may take one metastatic pancreatic cell 6 months of human-time to kill its host, but in Pancreas-time it takes about 76 minutes to take all the resources of a soma (mostly other cells) that can be taken.
In Gaian-time, the Great Human Expansion within and out of Africa, began 76 minutes ago (76k years ago in human time). The planet has (almost) been taken. And then what?
It is not “energy demand continues to increase due to population/economic growth”. It is “population continues to increase due to energy growth.” We don’t have a shortage of supply problem that prevents us from ending poverty. We have a longage of demand problem of 8 billion too many people who, on their way down, will know what to do with the 0.1 billion.
We have turned a planetary life-support system, a biosphere, mostly into tree farms and crops to support humans, livestock and pets (plus ornamentals and a few zoo animals to amuse). Pogo saw this clearly (as a few humans did, e.g. H.T. Odum) in 1970. Meanwhile, “the pace of planetary destruction has not slowed.”
The pace will soon slow, but it will not be as prosperous a way down as it was up. Sorry about that.
Oh, and there were more words, maybe 10x more words to read, but I have a planet to save by destroying modern humans (for the biosphere’s and posterity’s sake) one mind at a time, starting with my own, so don’t get in my way.
I celebrate Hu-man Day.