Earth Day is a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment. It was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in held on April 22, 1970. Earth Day is celebrated in spring in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. Earth Day Network, a group that wishes to become the coordinator of Earth Day globally, asserts that Earth Day is now observed on April 22 on virtually every country on Earth. -Wikipedia
Going to the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens has pretty much been my own random Earth Day observance, we tend to go to the park and look around and say-Hey, why are all these damned people here today?
I think this year the Earth is out to get us. Earthquakes and Volcanoes seem to be in the news all the time. So it might be a good time to move to someplace nice and environmentally friendly, like Pandora. Avatar is being released on DVD/Blu-ray on Earth Day, for those of you who didn’t get the whole People Bad, Nature Good message the first time round.
I watched the PBS American Experience on Earth Day. It was a fun show, that talked about how big Earth Day used to be and how it’s not such a big deal now. There was a lot of blaming Reagan for ruining the whole Environmental Movement and a lot of talk from old people who miss the Good Old Days. One of the interesting bits was about logging and how clear cutting is an act of evil, unless logging is the only way for you to make a living. It was still a fun show.
There was this great little cartoon series called The Goode Family about a couple of hyper liberal, ultra environmentally aware people who recycle everything and compete with their neighbors to see who is most Green. My favorite of the episodes featured a Freegan who was walking across the country begging for food and shelter and eating out of trash cans. He ended up moving in with our heroes and they have a hard time getting rid of him.
Another fun little show with an Earth Day kind of spirit was Junk Raiders, this show was about a group of people remodeling an apartment using as much free and recycled materials as they could. They found a lot of useful items that would have otherwise been put into landfills and they spent a lot of time arguing with each other. It went to the point that we all want to Save The World, but we all want New Stuff as well, not someone else’s trash.
We all want to Save The Earth-somewhere else. Ranchers in Oklahoma kill prairie dogs whenever they see them and Maine apple growers have no qualms about killing the cute little porcupines that eat their apples. We all want nature preserves and animal sanctuaries, so long as they are not where we live.
On the other hand there was a recent story about a group of people living in Dallas who are trying to stop the Power Company from cutting down trees that the power company says are interfering with the power lines. I think everyone should get themselves a Bloom Box and then they can just get rid of all the damned power lines. Bloom sounds like a great Earth Day kind of company.
There are too many people, but maybe there is hope that it will be better in a generation or two. Fred Pearce was on The Daily Show last night saying that women are having fewer children than they used to. This is great news for the planet and for the quality of life for the people living on that planet. This is not such great news for people like me, who was the sixth child of seven-but that’s alright. The smaller the population, the better-a small population can drive muscle cars and run the A/C all they want without worrying about Green House gas and without killing all the fish, birds, and wild life on Earth. One billion people use a lot less resources than six billion or eight billion or ten billion.
Happy Earth Day.
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You had me at Bloom Box.
A closely guarded secret, though: “A flat ceramic square made from a common sand-like ‘powder’.”
Ummmmmm…. Silcon?
Sign me up.