I trust all you good people celebrated Earth Day yesterday by … oh, cooling down the globe, commanding the oceans not to rise, singing hosannas to Al Gore, flinging your body between cute baby seals and ugly baby-seal hunters, or perhaps gleefully beheading litterers or people who leave too many lights on. (Which, BTW, I understand Al Gore has often done. Not going around gleefully beheading. But leaving LOTS of lights on.)
On the other hand, if you’re like most Earth Day celebrants, you probably just spent the day being publicly self-righteous and/or performing useless token gestures to show how superior you are.
Of course, some of you had a different idea of what constitutes a proper observance of Earth Day.
So … tell us all about YOUR Earth Day.
Reminds me of what Peter O’Toole said to Omar Sharif (playing Al Gore) in the semi-biographical movie Al of America: “Sherif Ali Gore, so long as the Americans pretend to care about earth day once a year while spending the whole of the year acting as if they live in a shopping mall, so long will they be a little people, a silly people, greedy, barbarous, and cruel, as you are.”
Once in a while – like yesterday – it occurs to me that I live pretty much exactly like the greenies would force all American peasants to live, if god forbid they had the power. I generate all my own ‘tricity, recycle and re-use like it’s a prayer to Mecca (I call it scrounging, and it really is a lifestyle) compost everything I can’t eat. I even find ways to do a bit of gardening, though this isn’t the place for it. And I wonder how long it would take most of them to run screaming if they were forced to try it.
The people driving the first “ecology movement” had a point. I remember the sixties (I really do) and we really had become a nation of slobs. Car windows were for dumping garbage from. It was dangerous or deadly to dip your toe in any river that ran through a city. The very air wasn’t transparent, and in some places it hurt to breathe it. Sometimes the first step to self-respect is shame. It didn’t start as a scam.
And I visited a city a few months ago, for the first time in years. Seriously, would it kill somebody to turn off a light when they’re not using it?
But look at it now. Al Gore? Is there a more transparent hypocrite anywhere? Getting a room full of TV “scientists” to intone “The Science Is Settled” like some sort of blissed-out mantra does not settle the science about “climate change” or anything else. It’s all just another power grab. Like we don’t already have enough of that. God, it’s disgusting.
Hadn’t realized it was Earth Day until I read this post. But I did give it due respect yesterday – I played in my garden soil (when I wasn’t dodging rain).
BTW, I loved George Carlin’s video; it was just what I needed this a.m. – it was not only funny, but took away any guilt I might have felt for NOT celebrating Earth Day, if I was inclined to feel guilt (which I wasn’t).
My elderly neighbor went to Walk with Scientists but came back and said it was too cold and rainy.
I told her not to worry, just wait a while…
Oh darn… did I miss it again? Rats.
I figure if I work and pay for stuff, I will use it in whatever way I please! Grew up turning lights and other things off when not in use. Has nothing to do with “green,” just want the smallest electric bill possible. 🙂 I’ve got garden things and plants to buy!!
Worked outside on the deck. It’s coming out beautiful. Also it was prom here so I occasionally spent the day cheering on, (via text messages), a girl from our church youth group whom I’ve counseled. Being taken out to dinner and dancing and ice cream can be quite overwhelming for someone coming from being a sexually abused self-harming suicidal teen runaway when I first met her. If anyone tried making her feel guilty for enjoying her extravagant day with this earth day bs, it would have taken great pains to not kick their teeth in.
I’m weird. I do “Earth friendly” stuff every day, but I see most “environmentalists” as hypocritical ignoramuses- only partly because I see “laws” (“environmental” and otherwise) the same way I see (other forms of) litter: as evidence that irresponsible people have left their filth lying around, messing up the world. But, I never do intentionally “non-Green” activities just because I despise the “Greens” and Algore. I don’t think it’s smart to soil my own nest as a way to strike back at them, and letting them goad me into things like that gives them too much power.
I Did what I do every year, have a BBQ using a charcoal grill (not propane) with a few friends then we sat around the fire pit with a nice warm fire looking at the stars and watched as the smoke drifted into the heavens. I have to admit there was some laughter as I commented it was earth Day and placed a log on the fire. The only difference for me this year was I didn’t drink any booze.
I have to say it was fun to look back at earth Day 1 and see the ever growing list of failed predictions.
http://www.aei.org/publication/18-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-made-around-the-time-of-first-earth-day-in-1970-expect-more-this-year/
I’m not sure if this counts as observing earth day, or flipping the bird at it. I spent 4 hours at the lumber yard, with my dad, picking out part for my chicken coop.
I had been collecting wooden pallets, used boards, and bits of plywood whenever I saw them being thrown away. My goal was to try and build the whole coop without spending any money on it. I was even looking forward to the challenge.
Well, dad found out what I was doing. He has this pathological hatred toward the idea of repurposing anything. Back when he build his first raised garden bed, he just about had an aneurism at the idea of lining the bottom with old newspaper. Oh no, it had to be brand-new, special paper, bought just for that purpose!
In a way, I am building the coop without spending anything. Dad insisted on buying all the parts. My design didn’t fit what the lumberyard had, so I was trying to re-sketch things right there in the store, while dad kept running from one end to the other trying to talk me into extras for the “cool factor”, like automatic lights or a robotic egg-gather, instead of focusing on things like how it would be framed and what insulation to use.
We compromised. I have a stack of brand-new studs and plywood to use, I just need to alter my design to fit the dimensions of the wood. He’s going to have to settle for actual walls instead of having a funny story about his stupid daughter getting distracted by extras like he wanted me to be.
He’s really a good engineer. He’s just also a jackass.
Whew! I needed to vent more than I realized! Thank you.
😀 Glad we could help.
I look back through the years and about the only non-green part of my life was my car-racing. If I had it to do over, I’d damned well do it again.
Otherwise? I figure that as many used cars as I re-cycled, my carbon footprint is pretty doggoned low.
Maybe I was a bad boy during my ranching years; cow farts.
I often wonder about just how many of these city folks greenies could survive living in the 1800s technology world that they seem to want. Granted that it was relatively short term, but I have and I could.
Ellendra,
I’ve been eco oriented and a prepper for thirty years and have dealt with my frustrating wife in these issues the whole time. She is someone who refuses to be prepared for anything…no flashlight, no pocket knife, refused to attend a personal defense course with me, hates my stockpiling food, etc., etc.
It IS very frustrating. Her tag line for 20 years has been..” Go live on an organic farm”.
Not a bad thought…
I started yesterday with the range session of a “Buying Your First Handgun” class. Seven brand-new shooters can tell the difference between a revolver and a semiauto, and know that a lighter gun kicks harder than a heavier one.
Then I interviewed an emergency-room charge nurse who is retiring from a 44-year career that also included labor/delivery, oncology, and 22 years as a school nurse, and wrote a “Hill Country Character” article for our weekly paper.
Then I replenished the ammo expended in the class, thus contributing my 11% to the Pittman-Robertson fund, and ordered materials for my fall Hunter Education classes.
I would have felt smug about that, if I had remembered it was Earth Day.
Didn’t do much of anything myself, except notice that it seems pretty chilly for near the end of April.
Joel @April 23, 2017 6:23 am:
Your points are all well taken. OTOH, more human death and misery – by many orders of magnitude – has been caused by too much government than by too much pollution. However noble its origins, the “ecology movement” has metastasized into little more than justification for a totalitarian state, and if more pollution were the price to pay to eliminate that justification, I think the price would be well worth paying. Actually, though, most of the reduction in pollution is a result of improved technology and the increased wealth enabling that technology, which would remain effective, and that reduction will be much better advanced by proper recognition and codification of property rights than by arbitrary (and misrepresented as to their true purpose) government mandates.
ellendra @April 23, 2017 9:51 am:
“He’s really a good engineer.”
I’m not so sure about that. As the old saying goes: An engineer is a guy who can build for a dollar what any damn fool can build for two dollars.
Hey Larry,
At least you didn’t go shooting seal cubs LOL.
trying2b-amused: Well, sometimes the engineer who wants you to spend a few bucks has a good reason for it. The cheaper version may work, but will it work well enough?
Worked in a telecom NOC back in the ’90s. Had a customer who ran a small ISP. He was forever calling in to report his line down (256k frac T1, believe it or not… ’90s ya know). I’d always ask if he’d reset his CSU, and he’d always reply that we always fixed his problem by resetting on our end (which we did, by taking his port out of and back in service, forcing his CSU to reset). But finally I got _him_ to do a reset and he was amazed that it worked.
That time, he wanted to stay on the line and pick my brains. Bottom line, would I recommend a CSU? Nope, wasn’t going there, for a variety of reasons. But I did tell him that in dealing with many, many customers, I’d noticed a trend. People with Adtran CSUs tended to have a lot of synch problems, but people with Motorolas only needed to call when there was a for-real line problem.
He mumbled humbly, “I have an Adtran.”
“You’ve got a lot of synch-loss problems, too.”
He broke down and bought a Motorola, and about the last I heard from him was him telling me he had it.
Libertarian: “Man, that Al Gore guy sure is a joke, isn’t he?”
Potentially Sympathetic Person: “You know he hasn’t been close to the reins of power since 2001, right? Did you hear Trump made Jeff Sessions his Attorney General? And he’s promised to ramp up the drug war and give cops free rein to abuse at will?”
L: “Ha! That’ll show those libtards why they shouldn’t be pressing for more government!”
PSP: “And Trump’s said he’s going to use our taxes to build a big concrete wall on the border: a monument to his ego, to the sanctity of national boundaries, and to the idea of the United States as some gated community with the undesirables kept out.”
L: “Well, we all know those foreigners don’t appreciate liberty the way we do. It’s the only way to keep our values intact.”
PSP: “And libertarians are always talking about how the voluntary actions of free individuals can solve big problems like global warming without having to resort to government regulation, but when I went to the Earth Day gathering, I didn’t see anyone there offering any of those solutions. Where were you?”
L: “You went to Earth Day? Ha! Was Al Gore there? Did he fly in on his private jet?”
PSP: “You know what… I’m going to talk to someone who has some ideas about liberty, freedom, and responsibility. Catch you later.”
PSP: “And libertarians are always talking about how the voluntary actions of free individuals can solve big problems like global warming without having to resort to government regulation, but when I went to the Earth Day gathering, I didn’t see anyone there offering any of those solutions. Where were you?”
Is a statist, scientifically ignorant event really the place a free marketeer can be most effective at promoting individual solutions to big problems?
I don’t see any harm in a freedomista attending Earth Day events to promote different tactics, and it’s true we could be more proactive. But I also can’t see that much good in attempting to fight battles on the statists’ terms or turf.
“…but when I went to the Earth Day gathering, I didn’t see anyone there offering any of those solutions. Where were you?”
I was an environmentalist before I knew what “libertarian” was. I still am. And I know government “solutions” make things worse. Therefore, I have offered solutions for many years. Statists refuse to listen because they don’t want problems solved without government, and with private property rights left intact. It’s just the reality of the situation. I used to attend Earth Day events, in fact (although I was less outspoken back then), and “More Government!!” was all anyone ever wanted to hear.
Bear @April 23, 2017 4:39 pm:
>sometimes the engineer who wants you to spend a few bucks has a good reason for it.
True enough. However . . .
>The cheaper version may work, but will it work well enough?
Another way to consider that situation is: The expensive version will definitely work, but do we really have to spend that much to solve the problem? Providing a sound answer to both questions is a large part of what’s called engineering judgment. You appear to have a good sense of it. I have my doubts about ellendra’s father.
There are essentially just two fundamental types of engineering problems. One is where the primary issue is whether the problem is solvable at all, for the other the primary issue is how much will it cost? The former gets all the glory, the latter is where the majority of the actually useful work is done.
At least you didn’t go shooting seal cubs LOL.
I usually wind up such classes giving my students five shots at my Home Invader target.
http://www.talonsite.com/homeinvader.pdf
Wtf funny, and legal in MA, where it is illegal to shoot at a human figure target at a range.
I spent my Earth Day blowing stuff up at Boomershoot 2017!!!