By Alan Caruba
The annual calendar is filled with
days and months designated for the purpose of calling attention to some event,
personality, or cause. The U.S. celebrates the birthdays of Lincoln and
Washington that fall close together. There’s Mother’s and Father’s Day, Labor
Day and Veteran’s Day, Valentine’s, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Easter and
Christmas.
But who decided that April was “Earth
Month” or that April 22 is “Earth Day”?
Why are we expected to worship
the planet that was here billions of years before we showed up and will likely
be here long after we manage to destroy ourselves with cataclysmic wars. And it
is worship that is at the heart of
these two events. That alone should tell you how essentially pagan they
are.
This Earth Month will celebrate its
45th anniversary, having
begun in 1970 and, not surprisingly, its theme is “Our planet in peril.” Our
planet is not in peril. It’s been around for 4.5 billion years and
short of a rogue asteroid or our getting sucked into a black hole, the planet
will be around several billions of years more. The galaxy in which we live is
relatively predictable and stable, so the notion that the Earth is in peril
borders on idiocy.
Well, idiocy, if you think that it is
in peril from us, the human species.
This is at the core of the environmental mindset. It appears that merely using
the Earth as a place to live is reason enough to hold us responsible for
everything that naturally occurs to it.
Environmentalists do not like the
human race and will not hesitate to tell you there are too many of us. They do
what they can to reduce the population through disease by, for example, banning
DDT and any other chemicals that protect us from insect and rodent pests that
are major vectors for the transmission of disease.
According to the 2015 Earth Month
Network, Inc. announcement “There are literally hundreds of problems and issues
plaguing our global environment, i.e., climate change, global warming and their
effects; and the continuation of polluting our delicate ecosystem just to
mention a few.”
Which is it? Climate change or global
warming? There hasn’t been any dramatic global warming in the past 19 years
during which the planet has been in a natural cooling cycle, along with the Sun
which we depend upon to warm us. So anyone claiming the Earth is warming is
blowing smoke up your skirt.
As for climate change, that has
always been occurring. Short term it’s called the four seasons. Long
term it takes the form of ice ages, major glaciations that have occurred every
140 million years, and other eras such as the Great Permian Extinction, the
largest in Earth’s history that wiped out an estimated 95% of every kind of
life-form on Earth. It was one of four mass extinctions over the course of the
3.5 billion years that life has existed on Earth. Remember the mammoths? They
died a mere 11,500 years ago.
Last year, the Earth Month theme was
“Returning to Nature.” Do you really want to return to nature? No electricity.
No shelter other than a nice cave. No food except for the animals or fish you
would have to catch for dinner. No vegetables or fruits except those you could
find wherever you lived. That’s right, no supermarkets! And, if you want to go
anywhere, you will have to walk.
Yes, nature sounds wonderful and, in
its own way, is wonderful, but the human species has devoted a great
deal of time to finding ways to survive it.
I was reminded that April was Earth
Month when I received an email from the Saybrook Point Inn & Spa which said
this Connecticut site was “excited to offer a special package to honor Earth
Day.” It is “a Certified Green Hotel” and you will be treated to a “unique
Ecotourism Getaway” that provides an “environmentally friendly stay without
sacrificing comfort.” Why would you want to pay them for their special package
if it didn’t include comfort and lots of it? Mostly what Saybrook Point wants is
your money, just like any other perfectly ordinary inn and spa that isn’t
“certified.”
One can be confident that we are going
to be regaled with all manner of “environmental” messages and events throughout
April, all of which have the same theme: the Earth is in danger from
YOU!
Do yourself a favor. Ignore them. Get
in your car and go where you want. Go to the supermarket and don’t worry about
the plastic packaging or the plastic bags. Set the temperature in your home or
apartment to a level of comfort that you like. It’s your life and you pay good
money to benefit from all the conveniences of modern life.
Let’s appreciate the Earth,
not worship it.
Environmentalism is one of the great
scams of the modern era. Its emphasis on “renewable energy” has been a huge,
expensive failure. Its claims of disappearing forests are bogus and its demands
for the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will only harm all
vegetation everywhere. The Earth needs CO2 in the same way you and all other
living creatures need oxygen.
Let’s celebrate mankind’s mastery of
the Earth in the form of agriculture, ranching, sophisticated shelters from the
log cabin to the skyscraper, the channeling of rivers to produce energy and the
technology that provides clean water for us. And, yes, manufacturing. You can’t
even imagine what the world was like before the discovery of coal, oil, and
natural gas.
The Earth is not in peril, only the
truth and common sense are.
© Alan Caruba, 2015
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