Earth Day?

Happy Earth Day!

My wife and I were sipping our coffee and reading our news this morning, when she looked up at me and said “Happy Earth Day!”

It astounded me!Not because my wife said it – she always remembers to remember things like that – one of the myriad reasons I love her.

No, the surprise was for two other reasons – time and change. Too much of one and not enough of the other.

I spoke at the first Earth Day forum, forty-eight years ago, in the Spring of 1970 on the campus where I was an undergraduate. It was an open forum. The speeches revolved around one main topic – overpopulation.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The speeches about pollution, natural resources, and food were all based on the central premise that the world was OUTGROWING its planet. 

More people = more mouths to feed. More people = more living space. More people = more natural resources consumed. More people = more people driving = more pollution. More people = MORE PEOPLE = GREATER MORE UNFORESEEN CATASTROPHES.

So it was about US. It was about us reproducing responsibly. It was about us finding ways to reduce the pollution from fossil fuels. It was about us finding ways to conserve our finite natural resources – water, forests, animals, land, oceans, air.

I don’t remember on which result my speech was centered, because after the first EVER Earth Day, no one seemed to be enervated beyond some desultory legislation about car exhaust and factory waste clean-up.

Forty-seven Earth Days after the first, look around you. Look at all the highway construction. Look at all the car dealerships. Take a sniff of your creeks (BUT DO NOT DRINK). Look at the plastic waste in the oceans, along side the roads, in the sewers.

Now read about Trump’s regulatory roll-backs on car emissions, coal use, and factory waste.

And I never mentioned Climate Change.

Yeah, Earth Day. 

Whoopee.

Food for thought.

Mac