As a young environmentalist, I grew up watching Captain Planet, the perfect amalgamation of 90s eco-liberalism. It had white people rapping, tokenized diversity, an obviously evil antagonist, and a feel-good message about individualized agency in a system-wide catastrophe. At the end of every episode, they told kids to help by cleaning up our local communities; we could save the planet together. Every day at recess, I led my small brigade of six-year-olds around the playground picking up little bits of trash. And we always recycled! I spent my play time putting plastic bottles in sorted bags so they could be shipped across the Pacific Ocean in enormous gas-powered cargo ships just to be burned and mainlined into the atmosphere. I should have been learning to find joy in life and organize industrial sabotage.
Matt Witmer lives and works in Philadelphia, PA along what used to be the banks of the Schuylkill River.