This week, just in time for Earth Day, EarthX has returned to facilitate an array of powerful events about environmental devastation and the global fight against it.

The Dallas-based festival, which is America's largest annual environmental expo, was founded in 2011 by environmentalist and businessman Trammell S. Crow, who initially branded the festival "Earth Day Dallas." Since then, the event has grown exponentially, drawing thousands of attendees across the globe and utilizing everything from artificial intelligence and private investors' summits to competitions for young artists.

It's an example of just how effective collaboration between people of all walks of life can be, and a blueprint for the kind of interconnected movement we'll need to combat the climate crisis.

Percy Vs Goliath Pits a Local Farmer Against a Giant Corporation

One of EarthX's main events is the EarthXFilm festival, which this year is screening 14 films and a total of 33 features about climate change, environmental racism, sustainable farming, youth climate activism, and other efforts. The films will be screened over a 10-day period beginning on April 16, both in-person in outdoor venues and on the festival's streaming platform, EarthXTV.

2021 EarthxFilm Festivalwww.youtube.com

Among this year's extraordinary selection of films is the world premiere of Clark Johnson's Percy Vs Goliath, a film that tells the true story of a farmer named Percy Schmeiser, who was sued by the alchemical corporation Monsanto after it accused him of using its patented genetically modified beans.

Schmeiser — whose farm had been growing its own crops for generations — engaged in a court case that eventually reached the Supreme Court and became a symbolic fight for farmers' rights against big business. Starring Christopher Walken as Percy, alongside Christina Ricci and Zach Braff, the film is one of the most highly anticipated titles among a slate of powerful offerings.

Keep ReadingShow less
MUSIC

The National, Lil Dicky, Julien Baker, and More to Auction Prizes for Propeller’s Climate Action Campaign

The campaign, which incentivizes fans to join the fight against the climate crisis, is in partnership with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Kendrick Brinson

Just in time for Earth Day 2021, digital marketing platform Propeller has launched their year-long NOW: Climate Action Campaign.

Artists including Lil Dicky, the National, and Julien Baker have agreed to join the campaign, with benefits going to the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). In order to help incentivize fans to join the fight against the climate crisis, the artists partnered with Propeller to create custom items and experiences.

Keep ReadingShow less
MUSIC

Grimes Says Climate Change Is Good, Actually

The enigmatic musician shared a poem that argues we should just let the climate crisis run its course.

Photo by JUSTIN LANE/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Grimes has been having quite an eventful 2020 so far.

The singer, record producer, and romantic companion of Elon Musk has spent her year getting ready for two major life events: releasing her forthcoming fifth album and becoming a mother. But when she's not tending to her unborn baby's needs, giving us a steady stream of singles, or showing us how to draw on our foreheads with liquid eyeliner, the enigmatic artist—born Claire Boucher—has a variety of quirky hobbies, like using an edited stock photo to announce that climate change is OK, actually.

Grimes shared a poem on Twitter early Monday morning that reveals her stance on the ongoing environmental crisis. It reads:

I,
Poet of destruction,
hereby declare that Global Warming is good.

So, you humans have carved your existence into the earth,
lest you be forgotten.
Why lament?

Be who you are, embrace your demise,
For you are the architect of it.

How smart you are, to eradicate a species as resilient as your own.
Why deny your power?

It's the greatest show in the universe.
Celebrate with me, the most momentous of deaths.

Now is the time to burn twice as bright and half as long

Sincerely,
Miss Anthropocene

That sure is one way to handle the growing epidemic of climate anxiety; just decide that the Earth heating up is a good thing! What's the good in trying to fight climate change, Grimes argues, when we did this to ourselves? What could be more fun than the world's entire population perishing together in a fiery, apocalyptic death? As Grimes recently told Crack Magazine, her soon-to-be-released album Miss Anthropocene will personify climate change as an evil villain; it'll be interesting to see how her positive outlook will be portrayed on the record.

Experts claim that unless aggressive action is taken worldwide, we only have about a decade left until the effects of climate change become irreversible. Hopefully by then, a galactic Tesla will be able to transport Grimes and her presumed baby daddy to a planet that humans have yet to destroy.

CULTURE

The Area 51 Raid Happened, Kind Of

Or is that what the government wants us to think?

Thankfully, the Area 51 raid didn't exactly go as planned.

Keep ReadingShow less
CULTURE

How to Choose Between the Area 51 Raid and the Global Climate Strike

Who says you can't "find them aliens" *and* save the world from existential destruction?

Odds are, you aren't going to work or school tomorrow.

This Friday, you have the choice of whether or not to do two very different (but similarly insurgent, anti-government) activities. September 20, 2019 is the date of both the Area 51 raid and the global climate strike.

Area 51, the legendary military base in the Nevada desert that has long been at the center of speculation and paranoia about alien activity, will be the location of a mass Naruto run that will occur early Friday morning. The raid was conceptualized on a Facebook event page called "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All Of Us." The page garnered over a million RSVPs, and since then it's become a popular and beloved meme.

The event gained attention from the U.S. government, and an Air Force spokeswoman went on record at the Washington Post and discouraged people from trying to invade the base, saying that "the U.S. air force always stands ready to protect America and its assets." For some, the government's veiled threat to shoot down invaders only added fuel to the flames, as suicidal Gen-Zers and millennials doubled down on their commitment to "find them aliens."

Since the raid took off, Lincoln County, Nevada has declared a state of emergency, and they currently expect a crowd of 40,000 people. Things worsened when the creator of the original event, Matty Roberts, announced a music festival called Alienstock near the site. After it began to draw comparisons to Fyre Festival, the event planners pulled the plug— but all day, people have been showing up in Rachel, Nevada anyway, which makes sense when you think about the kinds of people planning on raiding Area 51 in the first place.

The actual Area 51 raid is expected to occur from 3AM to 6AM tonight. Currently, the highway leading to Area 51, also known as Extraterrestrial Highway, is expecting heavy traffic and will be heavily policed.

Tomorrow is also the Global Climate Strike, which is expected to be the world's largest day of climate change activism. This day of protest was started by Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who began sitting outside her nation's Parliament every Friday in protest of global inaction on the climate crisis. The event quickly grew into a movement called Fridays for Future and has gained traction as the effects of climate change have become more undeniable and tangible.

Tomorrow, there will be an expected 4,638 climate strikes around the world, happening everywhere from Moscow to New York. In NYC, 1.1 million students will be allowed to skip school for the event, and millions more are expected to take to the streets. The strike has also garnered support from global trade unions and employees of giant companies like Google and Amazon. (Find and RSVP for your local strike here).

At first glance, these events seem like polar opposites. The main difference between the Area 51 raid and the global climate strikes is that the climate strikes are essentially dedicated to supporting life and ensuring a viable future on earth. On the other hand, the Area 51 raids are nihilistic, and a lot of the online discourse surrounding them seems to imply that there is nothing worth saving.

But when you look closer at the true nature of these parallel events, the more entangled their purposes seem. Attending a global climate strike means that you've accepted the terrifying notion that human civilization will end unless we mobilize on a mass scale, whereas the Area 51 raid requires a certain suspension of disbelief and denial, a certain faith in the extraterrestrial unknown, and at least a somewhat antagonistic view towards science and realism. That means that, essentially, the climate strike is way more punk than the Area 51 raid.

Maybe the events are more similar than they are different. They are both protests against the government and the people who are currently in power. They're both essentially products of young people's growing awareness that the world is not as it seems, that we don't have to listen to the rules we've always been taught, and that there's so much more going on behind the scenes than we know.

Obviously, the climate strikes are the way to go if you care about anything at all, want to make an actual change to the way the government and the world works, and/or want to avoid seeing poor and impoverished communities die in vast numbers over the next few decades while the rich take their spaceships to Mars. Unfortunately, in a lot of ways, raiding Area 51 and finding a bunch of aliens sounds more fun. It's kitschy and spooky; it's also more appealing if you're addicted to the internet or deeply depressed, due to its fundamentally apathetic and masochistic nature; and perhaps the climate movement could learn from the Area 51 initiative's viral nature.

Fortunately, the truth is that you don't have to choose between them. You can have it all: ou can honor your depressive and post-ironic impulses while still making an effort to change the world. The Area 51 raid is going to happen from 3AM to 6AM, so you technically can go to that and (if you don't get arrested) be at the Nevada City rally by midmorning. You can "find them aliens" and save the world, while evading capitalism and giving a middle finger to the U.S. government in the process.

Yes, that entire sentence sounds like something out of an absurdist comic book, and the simulation is becoming as glitchy as a group text with one Android in it. But like it or not, we're all in this messed up cosmic group text together. Now let's take this to the f*cking streets.