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Tuesday, April 22, 2008
News Marching toward ecological disaster
Posted By John Grooms on Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 12:04 PM
It's Earth Day, whatever that means anymore. The unofficial holiday — which started during the early days of the modern environmental movement in the 1970s — has largely become a collection of half-assed events held around the country, loosely crowded under a pro-environment umbrella. They often feature neat little displays that tell citizens "what you can do" to "help the environment," while a local band plays in the background. Many Earth Day events are even sponsored by some of the heaviest polluters in the world, namely American utility companies. But hey, we won't notice that today, we're too busy celebrating our own enlightenment about environmental issues. Celebrants will vow to quit buying bottled water and start using curly light bulbs, and then they'll go home to eat vegetarian meals and watch TV.
Don't get me wrong — the environment is a critically important issue, and whatever small measures ordinary citizens can take to reduce ecological disaster is welcome. But it's going to take a lot more than guilt-relieving festivals and changing our shopping habits or starting compost heaps to turn around our march toward ecological disaster. Namely, it will take citizens demanding that the government put the squeeze on the huge corporations who are responsible for the vast majority of the world's environmental degradation. You can buy "green products" until you turn green yourself, but if Duke Energy keeps on belching out carbon dioxide to beat the band, it won't matter. You can grow all the vegetables you can possibly eat, but if automakers aren't directed to produce electric cars and, instead, are allowed to continue producing low-mileage Hummers and such, it won't matter. You want to help the environment? Get involved politically. Sure, it's harder to do than switching out light bulbs or buying a new pair of Birkenstocks, but unless you do, Earth Day and all your good intentions will just be another thing that won't matter.
Speaking of News, Earth-Day
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