On Earth Day, Forget About the Planet -- We're the Ones Who Are Screwed
Share and save this post:
AlterNet Social Networks:
Also in Water
Poseidon's Financial Shell Game: Why Is a Private Desalination Plant Asking for Public Money?
Peter Gleick
How Limousine Liberals, Water Oligarchs and Even Sean Hannity Are Hijacking Our Water Supply
Yasha Levine
Is California's New Water Legislation Better Than Nothing?
Peter Gleick
Mystery of World's Worst Mass Arsenic Poisoning Finally Solved
A Very Good Week for the World's Rivers and a Bad Week for Dams
Lori Pottinger
California's Water Crisis Is Just the Beginning for Water Woes in the U.S.
Susan J. Marks
Dumping Earth Day has been on my mind for a year now -- and all the more so today because the NYT magazine just published an interview with our Nobel-prize winning Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, in which he says:
I would say that from here on in, every day has to be Earth Day.
Well, duh! Heck, we have a whole day just for the trees -- and we haven’t finished them off … yet. So if every day is Earth Day, than April 22 definitely needs a new name.
I don’t worry about the earth. I’m pretty certain the earth will survive the worst we can do to it. I’m very certain the earth doesn’t worry about us. I’m not alone. People got more riled up when scientists removed Pluto from the list of planets than they do when scientists warn that our greenhouse gas emissions are poised to turn the earth into a barely habitable planet.
Arguably, concern over the earth is elitist, something people can afford to spend their time on when every other need is met. But elitism is out these days. Only bitter environmentalists cling to Earth Day. We need a new way to make people care about the nasty things we’re doing with our cars and power plants. At the very least, we need a new name.
How about Nature Day or Environment Day? Personally, I am not an environmentalist. I don’t think I’m ever going to see the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I wouldn’t drill for oil there. But that’s not out of concern for the caribou but for my daughter and the planet’s next several billion people, who will need to see oil use cut sharply to avoid the worst of climate change.
I used to worry about the polar bear. But then some naturalists told me that once human-caused global warming has completely eliminated their feeding habitat -- the polar ice, probably by 2020, possibly sooner -- polar bears will just go about the business of coming inland and attacking humans and eating our food and maybe even us. That seems only fair, no?
I am a cat lover, but you can’t really worry about them. Cats are survivors. Remember the movie “Alien”? For better or worse, cats have hitched their future to humans, and while we seem poised to wipe out half the species on the planet, cats will do just fine.
Apparently there are some plankton that thrive on an acidic environment, so it doesn’t look like we’re going to wipe out all life in the ocean, just most of it. Sure, losing Pacific salmon is going to be a bummer, but I eat Pacific salmon several times a week, so I don’t see how I’m in a position to march on the nation’s capital to protest their extinction. I won’t eat farm-raised salmon, though, since my doctor says I get enough antibiotics from the tap water.
If thousands of inedible species can’t adapt to our monomaniacal quest to return every last bit of fossil carbon back into the atmosphere, why should we care? Other species will do just fine, like kudzu, cactus, cockroaches, rats, scorpions, the bark beetle, Anopheles mosquitoes and the malaria parasites they harbor. Who are we to pick favorites?
See more stories tagged with: global warming, climate change, earth day, clean water
Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Water! Sign up now »
Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.
Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.
EMAIL
PRINT
92 COMMENTS
