Merry Earth Day

April 22, Earth Day. This is apparently how we have come to acknowledge the importance of the planet to our lives. We clean up a river, we plant a tree, we go to recycling seminars. Everyone is proud that so many people are conscious of the environment.

The day after, we continue to pollute the river, clear cut old growth forests to mulch up as particle board and continue to consume. Earth Day is becoming like Christmas or Thanksgiving or even the 4th of July. A one day event, with little thought to the reason, celebrated for tradition rather than purpose.

When gas was approaching $5 a gallon the world was abuzz with talk of "green" technology. Now that the price has momentarily receded there seems little focus on sustainability and a change from the paradigm of oil. The current economic crisis is only providing cover to continue the business as usual approach to a fossil fuel based economy and a reckless disregard for pollutants in the environment.

The problems go well beyond CO2 emissions. The problems are well beyond that of particulate matter in the air. It's pharmaceuticals and industrial pollutants in the water supply, it's the accumulation of neurotoxins in individuals and the environment, it's the presence of carcinogens in product after product, it is the slow and deliberate degradation of the wilderness in the name of profit and progress. The bees are dying and the bananas are going extinct. I have yet to mention climate change and its consequences.

The resources of the planet are finite. Treating them as if they are otherwise sets us all on a collision course with disaster. Unless we find a way to live sustainably and stop the damage to our home, we will ultimately run out of resources.

The rhetoric that suggests we cannot change without further damaging the economy misses the point or distorts the truth. It is not that change will be costly, it is that failure to change will be even costlier. Those who remain stuck in the old economy based on oil will be left behind and marginalized. Solving the environmental crisis will solve the economic crisis. Without the natural world there will be no world left in which to have an economy.

Earth Day could come to serve as a one day memorial to the environment. A few days ago I wrote that you can't eat bullets. You also can't eat money. Time to get the priorities in order. Reduce-Reuse-Recycle.