April 22, 2013
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Earth To Earth: Wake Up!
Today is Earth Day the one day of the year when we kind of pretend to attempt to think to care about the earth and the environment before we go back to remembering how inconvenient environmental protection is. The environment is not the most important topic to anybody who is not an environmentalist. Not only is it not the most important topic, but it is actually pretty damn far down the list of important topics. Yet it very well might be the most important topic.
This year Earth Day is overshadowed by a lot of other issues. For starters there is of course the Boston bombings a story that is still dominating the news. There is also the issue of gun safety which has been a hot topic, well forever but especially since December. There is the issue with North Korea as well. There is the issue of gay marriage which will be decided by the Supreme Court in a couple of months. There is the issue of Justin Bieber and his stupid fucking monkey. Why anybody would ever give a monkey’s ass about Justin fucking Bieber I don’t know, but yet he is talked about more than the environment. And of course, the ever popular economy which is always a big topic. All of these issues seem to garner more press and attention than the environment. In fact there are probably a dozen more topics that get more attention that I didn’t even mention.
But yet the environment get overlooked time and time again. Perhaps because it is not a sexy topic like which NBA player is the latest to be nailing a Kardashian. Or maybe because it is not the most exciting topic like the manhunt for a terrorist. Or maybe it is because the people that do choose to believe that the environment is important bury their heads in the sand so they don’t have to be bothered with making a change to their lifestyle to help save the world. It could be any number of reasons or a combination of reasons. But it doesn’t mean that it is still not important.
The ironic part is that what we all do has an effect on every single person in the world and even on people who have not yet been born or even thought of yet. What will do now will impact those who are living on this planet in a hundred years. Look, I know global climate change is controversial and not everybody believes it. But, the environment is more than just global warming. It’s water quality. It’s air quality. It is food quality. It is the poisons we put into the air and soil. Even if you don’t believe in global warming or even if it actually isn’t real, you can still be impacted by what we do to the environment. Pretend global climate change isn’t real if you must, but there is no way that anybody is ever going to be able to convince me that the thick black smoke emanating from a refinery is good for the inhabitants of this planet. Opponents of environmental protection like to argue that environmental regulations hurt the economy but nobody can possibly justify to me that dumping chemicals into a major waterway is good for humans.
While you might think about the environment today, the key is to think about it the rest of the year and when you are not only voting, but also when you are donating to charities or just living your everyday life. Remember, we have one earth, we can’t exactly pick up and leave once we have destroyed this one.
