It may surprise many of my huge audience to learn that I am not opposed to the idea of Earth Day. I love Earth, I like being here, and I think we should take care of it, and I have no problem with taking a day to celebrate it. What I don't like is that Earth Day was created by and has been dominated by radical environmentalists and tends to be observed with pointless gestures that make people feel good about themselves and superior to others while simultaneously doing nothing at all for the Earth. In fact, I remember growing up in Boulder, Colorado, a very liberal place where Earth Day was a big deal, and it's amazing how much paper (recycled, sure) goes to making Earth Day posters that end up being day after Earth Day litter. I love the term coined by Rush Limbaugh to describe these "environmentalists": watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside).
Contrast that to another Colorado event I remember attending in my childhood: Dan's Bake Sale. This started as a joke, with Rush Limbaugh suggesting to a caller, "Dan", who couldn't afford a subscription to The Limbaugh Letter, that he organize a bake sale to raise the funds (he was making fun of a school who had held a bake sale to reduce the deficit). Only a joke, yet it ended up a major gathering of conservatives, around 65,000 total from all over the U.S., and Limbaugh himself gave a speech. 65,000 Earth-hating conservatives should have quite the environmental impact, right? Yet hours after the event there was not a trace anyone had been there. No littering, no detrimental impact to the environment. This is a tangent, though...
Why can't Earth Day be a genuine celebration of the Earth, rather than a day of empty symbolism and finger-wagging at people who don't drive a Prius? Why does it have to be a day to call progress and technology and those who use it evil? Let's just celebrate the planet we live on and take care of the bit we live on and stop wasting our time, money and energy on unsustainable and unworkable "alternative" fuels and worrying about our "carbon footprint" which makes no difference in the long run. In fact, let's be glad that because we live (so far) in a successful, capitalist society that we can afford the luxury of taking care of our environment.
Guess what? Affluence and technology are good for the Earth! I read one of the best articles I've ever read on the environment yesterday, from the New York Times of all places! It's called "Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet", and it is a must-read. Here's a paragraph that stuck out to me:
As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit of energy. This global decarbonization trend has been proceeding at a remarkably steady rate since 1850, according to Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University and Paul Waggoner of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.
“Once you have lots of high-rises filled with computers operating all the time, the energy delivered has to be very clean and compact,” said Mr. Ausubel, the director of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller. “The long-term trend is toward natural gas and nuclear power, or conceivably solar power. If the energy system is left to its own devices, most of the carbon will be out of it by 2060 or 2070.Makes sense to me. I recommend reading the entire article.
What else did I do for Earth Day? I watched an episode of my favorite documentary: Planet Earth. One of these days I will be affluent (and therefore green!) enough to afford an HDTV and a Blu-Ray player, and the first thing I buy in HD to enjoy on this system will be Planet Earth. I have never seen better footage of Earth, from scenic views of mountains to rare views of exotic animals and environments. There are two versions, though, one narrated by Sigourney Weaver and one by David Attenborough. They have identical footage and scripts, but Attenborough has a much better narrating voice, so if you get the DVDs be sure you know which version (Weaver is Discovery Channel, Attenborough is BBC). There's an occasional irritating environmental destruction comment in the narration, but overall this is an excellent celebration of Earth, and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's almost a disservice to show YouTube quality clips when it should be seen in HD, but I will end this post with two of my favorite clips from Planet Earth:
A great white shark attack in slow motion:
A deadly mind-controlling fungus that feeds on insects:
That's it for now. Take some time this week to go burn some fossil-fuels in your car, on a good scenic drive!
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