Reflections on Earth Day 50

To celebrate Earth Day, our Marketing Operations Manager Adam Powers took time to reflect on the role his father and grandfather had in empowering him to fight for a cleaner planet.

Legacy empowers me to strive for a thriving green future

I grew up around Dallas, Texas, in a politically split household where not everyone got global warming. When I was a kid, my dad denied climate change and saw mocking those concerned as part of his identity. Learning from Dad, I grew up thinking it wasn't my problem.

It wasn't until my grandpa on my mom’s side introduced me to Al Gore’s work communicating climate science that my course corrected. Waking up to the inconvenient truth of humans overheating our atmosphere with greenhouse gas pollution faced me towards a toxic and terrifying, fiery, fossil-fueled future. So I decided I need to do everything possible to act on what scientists are telling us. To me, this meant speaking climate truth, finding a career to save the world full-time, and expanding my impact.

I took it all on—coming of age constantly debating my dad on climate policy and in my day-to-day working at a start-up renewable energy supplier, selling access to wind and solar power to folks of all stripes. I could not get over how many different ways I tried arguing to convince my dad climate change is real. It wasn't until I could completely walk through the science of the climate crisis and its solutions in a formal presentation that he started to see the light.

The week after this slide deck deep dive, after a decade of denial, my dad let me know he switched to 100% wind and solar power to supply his home electric usage. Who knows if he actually started acknowledging the scientific consensus—what matters is he saw a better future with his son by choosing clean energy. I will never know now that he’s gone, but I hold both him and my grandpa’s memory close to my heart when thinking about my own environmentalism, envisioning and working towards a climate safe future for us all.

What empowers me to expand my impact?

If asked what keeps me going, I say my courage comes from the most pure and renewable source ever conceived: the power of people like you. That you’ve read this far makes you a part of a coalition of the concerned and compassionate: people power generated by acquaintances, co-workers, friends, family, and communities around the world are the connections that bind us into a supercharge stronger than any source of electrons. Reflecting on the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, I think about how we can all hold our past close together with our future to electrify bold climate action. For tomorrow, today. Join us at CleanChoice Energy and together we’ll expand our impact.