Thoughts on Earth Day 2023

On this Earth Day 2023 I’m thinking of many things. My ongoing research into higher education and the climate crisis fills my mind with the sprawling dimensions of the problem: rising sea levels versus campuses, academic research and activist students, desertification and infrastructure.

This day can be compromised, of course. There’s a commercialization of it under way. It’s also a good opportunity for greenwashing. Yet I’m thinking of its basic idea, the appeal for Earth consciousness as well as its call to action.

(This will be quick, as I’m caught between work and a family trip.)

What should we do, in academia?

I think of the academics — faculty, staff, students, etc. — for whom climate change is not a call to action. It’s part of the background hum of 21st century life, one piece of the very large strategic mosaic. Thinking and planning about it can be outsourced in many ways: to a sustainability officer, some environmental studies faculty, to insurance companies. It doesn’t merit proactive steps. We have a *lot* of other things on our collective plates, and all too often have to address them with fewer resources and less support. Many people are exhausted from the past few years of pandemic, politics, precarity.

I hear this, especially the last point about exhaustion. Such has been the lot…