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Probably it's just the foot of snow outside, along with the wind-chill warnings, but I don't feel very kindly disposed to Earth as the 25th Annual Earth Day approaches.
Just give me some more heat from non-renewable fossil-fuel natural gas, or from that particulate-producing and monoxide-generating wood stove that robs our forests of valuable nutrients. Heat my coffee and power my computer with more electricity from strip-mined coal, a flooded valley, maybe even a nuclear reactor. I want to gaze out the window and indulge in inappropriate patriarchal hegemonic chauvinistic feelings of conquest over the bleak and gelid Gaia out there.
By the end of the week, though, the balmy part of April may supplant the Colorado part of April, and then I'll feel connected to the seamless web of nature as the birds chirp and the apple blossoms begin to show.
Has it really been 25 years since the first Earth Day? It seems like yesterday. I was an editor at the campus paper in Greeley then, and we honored the occasion by printing color -- green.
But it wasn't soy-based ink (it was petroleum-based, made from recycled dinosaurs), and the green ink doubtless contained toxic metallic compounds. The paper came from recycled trees. Our goals were noble, but we were rather ignorant about how to put ideals into practice.
Gary Snyder, the environmental poet, spoke on campus for that first Earth Day. I missed his recitation because I was working. But his appearance was memorable anyway because during the day, the campus non-conformists followed him around, all in a line like ducklings.
Enough reminiscing. What has the environmental movement accomplished in the past 25 years?
The movement certainly hasn't improved the political environment. Parts of the environmental movement operate much like certain segments of the Republican Party who developed and perfected the technique of scaring people over a contrived issue, and then offering to solve the problem.
Whatever upsets you about America is the fault of immigrants, homosexuals, feminists, communists, fellow-travelers, drug users, rap singers, single mothers, welfare children or some other bogey-man of the month. And if you'll just send these Republicans some money, and elect them to office, they'll solve the problem.
One environmentalist approach is similar: global warming, ozone depletion, ocean pollution, aquifer contamination, deforestation, turbidity ... for one or more of these reasons, the world will end next week unless you send them some money and grant them some power.
More of that apocalyptic rhetoric is the last thing our political environment needs, and the environmental movement must take blame for contributing to it.
Environmentalism also got married to the Democratic Party, which is rather curious in light of history. Before the first Earth Day, environmentalism was a pursuit of GOP aristocrats like Theodore Roosevelt and Guiford Pinchot.
Tying environmentalism to a national party means that every environmental issue is nationalized, polarized and partisan. Let's say we worked out some local deal on logging -- quite limited in scale, no clear-cuts, but enough to serve nearby markets and provide a few jobs while keeping some money in town that might otherwise go to Oregon or Georgia.
National timber lobbies, with Republican support, would agitate for clear-cutting. National environmental lobbies, with Democratic support, would agitate for full wilderness protection. Each side is willing to spend mightily and go to court for years to get its way.
Those of us on the ground here would get shafted, either way. If environmentalism were non-partisan, then our elected leaders could apply some common sense without being accused of selling out.
The environmental movement also plays to emotions while
claiming to preach cold, rational science. Take, for
instance, the oft-cited observation that The world is
losing one species per day.
How could anybody know that? Biologists can't even agree on what defines a species, so there's no way to know how many there are. There is no Global Species Registry that can tell you that on April 10, 1995, there were 26,535,897 species extant, but only 26,535,896 survive today.
Another lingering bad effect of the first Earth Day is
that the environment
became so trendy that people
began wanting to live in the environment.
So rural areas get pieced into 35-acre subdivisions, each holding an expensive house with a septic system that leaks into the creek, the houses inhabited by commuters who venture 50 miles a day to work -- but they're doing the right thing because they're living close to nature, right?
And I haven't even touched on horrors like the Clean Water Act, the Superfund that enriches lawyers, laws that make federal cases out of county landfills.
All I can do is hope that the environmental movement learns something from the first 25 years, and does a better job in the next 25. One consolation is that it could hardly do worse.
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