On the first of the month, workers around the world celebrated May Day — the international day of workers’ rights. Virtual and socially distanced rallies throughout the county highlighted the harsh realities coronavirus has imposed on workers this year — mass unemployment, lack of protective equipment and precautions, and the imperative of protecting livelihoods.
On Earth Day, one week earlier, County Supervisor Das Williams published an op-ed, “Earth Day Challenge,” celebrating the fact that our collective confinement has reduced demand for oil and cut greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 5.5 percent this year. He congratulates his constituents by saying, "You are successfully demolishing a significant part of the fossil fuel industry as global demand for oil tanks. Keep it up!" In the op-ed, our willingness to shelter-in-place proves that individuals actually can make the kind of behavioral changes that we have so far been unwilling to make to reduce our emissions. The pandemic thus exposes the “cop out” environmentalists have engaged in when they urge politicians to reign in the excesses of oil companies but refuse to chastise individuals for their own driving habits.
Unfortunately, as the May Day rallies illustrated, not everyone has such forgiving bosses or workplaces that will allow them to “keep it up,” nor can they necessarily afford to. Indeed, offered to people who are losing their livelihoods, who are desperately wondering where their next paycheck is going to come from, and whose employment-dependent health care is being revoked, congratulations may fall a little flat.