If I had to pinpoint the exact moment that I started caring about the earth we live on and had a language to discuss it with, it would be when I enrolled in Dickinson College. Known for its sustainability, Dickinson College became a carbon neutral institution in 2020 and is highly rated by the Princeton Review Green Honor Roll. While I was there from 2012 to 2016, I appreciated the water bottle refilling stations, the college farm that contributed to campus dining services and local restaurants and the Center for Sustainability Education that instilled in students the importance of taking conscious action to sustain the earth.
That’s how the fuse was lit.
Within the last year there were two pieces of work that solidified and further propelled my sustainability mindset: “No Planet B: A Teen Vogue Guide to the Climate Crisis” edited by Lucy Diavolo and Lorde’s album “Solar Power.” The Teen Vogue collection “No Planet B” includes articles from 2016 to 2020, many written by teen activists for climate change. It covers the basics of climate change, the fossil fuel industry, how recycling plastic won’t stop plastic from ruining the earth, intersectionality—that is, the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression, considering gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, etc.—with climate activism and the global impact climate change is having on indigenous people. In one article from 2019, we hear from Amanda Cabrera, an eight-year-old at a climate change strike in New York City who says, “We need the planet but the planet doesn’t need us.” All of these young voices are the ones who will be most affected by climate change, and they understand just how dire it will get if nothing is done to slow it down.
Another young voice affected by climate change is Lorde. Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O’Connor, known professionally as Lorde, is 25 years old and released her latest album “Solar Power” in August 2021. It’s an album inspired by her time spent in nature when she cut out social media and most of the internet in 2018. On the album, Lorde balances the knowns with the unknowns. The song “Fallen Fruit” is her most explicit on climate change with lyrics like “It’s time for us to leave,” the fallen fruit of the title signifying what little is left after prior generations’ development and damage of the earth. On the final song of the album, “Oceanic Feeling,” she sings about lineage of place and connection with the earth and its elements. She starts off by thinking about her ancestors, her past; and then to her brother, her present; and finally, she thinks about a daughter in her future. But will there be a world for that daughter in the future?
I remember reading “No Planet B” at the lake while listening to Lorde’s album “Solar Power” over the summer, feeling all of my big feelings about the earth and all the harm we have done to it that cannot be undone. Layers and layers of things humans have built on this earth, roads that connect us but also cause pollution, buildings that the majority of people can’t afford to live in, factories that only care about efficiency and profit and are pumping toxic waste into our air, into our water, into our lives. It doesn’t just disappear, it piles up—everything we have done to the earth will overtake humanity in the end. Corporations are the biggest producers of waste and yet most of the climate anxiety and call for sustainability is placed on the individual.
What can an individual really do to improve the world? I can start with putting my money where my mouth is. That means I’m not investing in Tesla or Amazon, to start. Other big corporations—including asset managers BlackRock and Vanguard that have had a huge hand in environmental destruction—are also off the table. And I’m not interested in investing much in cryptocurrency either—according to Digiconomist on Twitter: “During 2021 Bitcoin consumed 134 TWh [terawatt-hours] in total, which is comparable to the electrical energy consumed by a country like Argentina. Related CO2 emissions were ~64 Mt [metric tons]; enough to negate the entire global net savings from deploying EVs [electric vehicles].”
What I can do is research my investments before I put my money into them. That socially responsible exchange-traded fund (ETF) I think I found? It’s an iShares ETF, and iShares is owned by BlackRock. And its top 10 holdings are full of big corporations. Oh, and it’s mostly invested in military-grade weapons and fossil fuels! Many investments are masquerading as sustainable for me to feel better about investing in them, and I’m not going to fall for that.
There are many layers of sustainability to look for in an investment, including whether the company itself is investing sustainably, can sustain its business, is using and creating sustainable products and, at the end of the day, can also offer sustainable investment returns.
Though it will be a more difficult route, I’m going to find stocks and funds that create better ways of living for our future like efficient solar energy, wind power, waste reduction, pollution control and green transportation. Even though I’ll be investing for the long term, I want to take action now so I can make a larger impact in the future. There’s only so much an individual can do in the fight for climate change, but if we all care just a little bit it will make a world of difference.
If you’ve been inspired to look for sustainable investments, let me know what led you to this point—be it a book, an article, a discussion with family/friends or a personal experience in nature.
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