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Monday was Earth Day, and some zealots have suggested that it become a formal quasi-holiday, like Valentine's Day or Hallowe'en.
As bad ideas go, this ranks somewhere between Dan Quayle and Two Forks.
If Earth Day makes the calendars, then for the six weeks before Earth Day, every store will be festooned in green crepe paper while Earth carols play in the background: condescending Gary Snyder poems, shrill songs of the hump-back whale, grating cackles of rain-forest birds.
You'll have to send Earth Day cards which feature extinct creatures like the passenger pigeon, dodo, ivory-billed woodpecker and smallpox virus. (This organism, which survived 4 billion years of evolution and played a major role in history, just became extinct from human activity. Where are the protests? Doesn't anybody in the anti-speciesism crowd care about this poor, despised virus?)
You would also have to shop for Earth Day presents, although Nancy Reagan may have already started the appropriate trend -- recycled gifts.
Earth Day would be just another merchandising extravaganza if it became more formal. The more stuff that gets sold, the more pollution from its production and transport, and the greater the disposal problem afterward.
Besides, we already have too many holidays. On holidays, people travel, barbecue, camp, consume and pollute. When people go to work, they do as little as possible. Even a state senator could figure out that a work day is better for the environment.
But the real problem with Earth Day is that it's like Thanksgiving and Christmas. On those two days, the hungry and homeless get fed; the other 363 days, they rummage through garbage cans, but we smugly feel that we've done our part. On Earth Day, we plant trees and recycle trash; the rest of the year, we deplete the ozone and pack the landfills.
We ought to reverse this, and celebrate Un-Earth Day instead. On Un-Earth Day, we would forego recycling, drive an oil-burning gas-guzzler six blocks for a quart of milk, commute 50 miles to work, gorge on rain-forest beef packaged in styrofoam, use bleached coated virgin paper from clear-cut old-growth forests, and cruise to a distant shopping mall to buy the latest in planned obsolescence.
We'd live high on the hog, reckless and decadent with no thought of the morrow, as though Ronald Reagan were still President. Everybody would look forward to Un-Earth Day, the annual consumptive binge when we relive the traditional American ways. On the other 364 days, of course, we would live in a prudent and sensible manner.
Earth Day, as it works now, is a threat to the environment. But Un-Earth Day could save the planet.
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