earth day = humans day

what am I doing for earth day? well I rode my bike to work in the pissing spring rain. please hold your applause. riding my bike to work is not going to "save our planet."

this may get a little ranty so cool your boots.

We’ve been getting duped for a long time with this earth day bullshit. Now everyone is “green” and every company offers a “green” product line. You can pledge monthly tithing’s to save: whales, wolves, hawks, beaches, frogs and trees. Hell you can even pledge to send some poor belly full of worms kid in a developing country to school. You can put their picture on your fridge and smile each time you go for your next beer. But really what it all boils down to is saving our own asses.

Before I get too cynical let I re-direct.

We are animals. Unlike other animals like iguanas in the Galapagos Islands, we do not speciate. This means that we are not limited by geographic location as we can adapt to live in any part of our earth. Like the iguana, we have a habitat which needs a basic level of natural functioning to support the life of the iguana. Any radical changes in the Galapagos sea iguanas’ environment and it will die. This is the same for us. However, because we can adapt so easily, and we can eat and digest just about anything, our habitat is not as easily derailed as say that of a really specialized animals like the marine iguana of the Galapagos.

All I’m saying through the above obvious statement is that we need to be honest with ourselves and with the language we use. We are destroying our own habitats. Some have destroyed theirs so completely that it doesn’t support them any longer and they must rely on aid. Haiti is the perfect example. I won’t waste any virtual ink on the blaming game as to who is responsible for the most damage to our habitat (we all know it’s the developed countries). The bottom line is that if you shit in your cage then you gotta sleep in your shit.

So what is the answer? How do we fix things? According to some it may be too late but perhaps the most powerful thing anyone in a developed country can do to help preserve their “own” habitat is to radically cut down on their total consumption of resources. I will leave it that as I intended this to be more linguistic discussion than an ethical argument about consumerism environmentalism.

Happy Humans Day!