Historical Roots
A thorough examination of the historical characteristics of the founding of Earth Day contributed to my understanding of the overall context and answered questions about the function, significance, and expected consequences of the phenomenon. In my study of thematic materials, I encountered discrepancies due to the biases of primary source authors — I used contextual analysis to explore this bias (Ruben, 1995; Waxman, 2019; World of Antiquity, 2020). This led me to conclude that there was a need to expand the number of sources studied in order to minimize bias and distortion of historical facts. Thus, over the past few weeks, I have been carefully reading various materials and accumulating knowledge about the creation of Earth Day and the holiday’s relationship to the climate change agenda. This allowed me to expand my own knowledge of the topic and outline the range of individuals involved, who were related but who received different attention in the materials. Finally, it led me to the realization that the issue of public awareness of climate change cannot be interpreted unequivocally, and one should be skeptical of published information, verifying it with parallel research.
Biased Perspectives
The study of past experiences is only possible through the paradigm of human perception as described in primary and secondary sources. Author bias should never be excluded, as each writer interprets information based on their own experience, vision, and thinking (Lim et al., 2020). In the context of the research question, it has been shown that regardless of the date of publication, both old and new materials appear equally biased as they try to tell their story (Ruben, 1995; Waxman, 2019). Such a narrative turns out to be partial and fragmented and does not allow for an overall historical context; moreover, biased sources may deliberately or unintentionally distort information based on political, economic, or cultural motivations. In other words, bias in the study of history should be perceived as an unbalanced or unfair opinion (McCullagh, 2000). Such materials will be read by people with low critical thinking skills, which will set the stage for the development of partial, biased data.
Narrative: Historical Event
The missing perspective in the primary sources studied was due to the lack of data on the social significance and ecological value of Earth Day in the face of the climate change agenda. If the narrative had been told from this perspective, the significance mentioned would have been assessed in addition to the historical discussion of the foundation of the holiday. In particular, this could have included the results of a survey of respondents’ perceptions of Earth Day, engagement with the holiday, and statistics on holiday. In addition, it would be helpful to include information about the environmental impact of the holiday, including potential information about reducing the carbon footprint, energy savings, and initiatives being developed in light of the project. In this case, the historical details are not omitted but are expanded by extrapolating them to a contemporary agenda that assesses the social and ecological significance of the event. In short, the theme of the historical basis of the holiday itself is unchanged but significantly expanded if the missing viewpoints were included in the materials.
Narrative: Current Event
The current event discussed Greta Thunberg’s emotional speech at the UN summit on rapid climate change. In this speech, the girl addressed politicians and seriously criticized government strategies (or rather the lack thereof) for managing climate change (NBC News, 2019). Among other things, Thunberg used statistics to paint the current situation in the right emotional tone. It is clear that Thunberg was biased — although her speech included data, she did not talk about the social and environmental significance. Specific, measurable outcomes of national governments’ indecision and what they will lead to need to be added to these words — famine, war, pandemics, and death (Bernstein, 2022). In addition, it would be helpful to discuss the ecological consequences of inaction, namely the decline of ecosystems, the death of species, and the destruction of biodiversity, which is devastating to the biosphere as a whole. Considering Thunberg’s speech in light of the suggested improvements would have created a stronger, more persuasive, and evidence-backed monologue with a greater likelihood of being heard as early as three years later. Among other things, it would have helped to view the speech not as biased and probably bribed material but rather as a lively, energized, and fear-filled speech.
References
Bernstein, A. (2022). Coronavirus, climate change, and the environment: A conversation on COVID-19 with Dr. Aaron Bernstein, director of Harvard Chan C-CHANGE. Harvard. Web.
Lim, S., Jatowt, A., Färber, M., & Yoshikawa, M. (2020). Annotating and analyzing biased sentences in news articles using crowdsourcing [PDF document]. Web.
McCullagh, C. B. (2000). Bias in historical description, interpretation, and explanation. History and Theory, 39(1), 39-66.
NBC News. (2019). Read Greta Thunberg’s full speech at the United Nations Climate Action Summit. NBS. Web.
Ruben, B. (1995). Speaking for the Earth. Environmental Action, 27(1), 11-13.
Waxman, O. B. (2019). Meet ‘Mr. Earth Day,’ the man who helped organize the annual observance. Time. Web.
World of Antiquity. (2020). How to research a history topic | basics of the historical method [Video]. YouTube. Web.