The most useless day of the year....Earth Day

Here it is again. April 22^nd. To a lot of us this is just another day. But to others it is a day equal to Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, Boxing Day, Waitangi Day, Balloon Ascension Day, Mardi Gras, Save the Rhino Day, The 4^th of July, and Dictionary Day combined. Yes ladies and gents, it is once again Earth Day!!

First off, let me tell you what really annoys me about this day. I don’t like being forced into something by someone trying to make me feel guilty. I don’t like how you only care about the Earth if you follow every crazy thing environmentalists and others who treat environmental problems like they are a religion want you to follow. And most of all, I don’t like how the green movement is no longer about helping the environment. It is strictly for making money off of people’s emotions. If you don’t believe me, look into the company General Electric. You know the company that owns NBC Universal and uses everything in its power to promote their products on TV, radio, and print? Who does absolutely asinine things such as “Green Week” on NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, USA, and whatever other channels they own by claiming that since they planted 100 trees somewhere in Somalia they can use all the oil, gas, and electricity they want? OK, now with that out of the way, we can get on with our Earth Day lesson.

Does anyone out there in blog land know why Earth Day came into being? Is it because some hippies up in San Francisco needed a good reason to get high, and the idea of an Earth Day would give them an excuse? Did some scientists come together on a “consensus” and decide if we did not have an Earth Day the oceans would rise and people on the Eastern seaboard would all drown? If you answered yes to either of those, I really hope you are joking. The real answer on who created Earth Day is….wait for it….A POLITICIAN!!!

Shocking huh? Now please, read further and I will give you a quick history on the origins of Earth Day, and some of the things that scientists and other so called experts claimed with near certainty were going to happen but never did.

It all started with a Gaylord from Wisconsin. No, I am not trying to make fun of any sexual preference he might have had, that was his name. Gaylord Nelson was a Senator from the great state of Wisconsin. Mr. Nelson loved the earth (I don’t know if he still is kicking or not, and if he is, I bet he still loves the earth just as much now as he did then.) and wanted to find a way to get others to feel the same way. The Senator got the idea for Earth Day when he visited an oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, Ca. (Side note: While I do agree that oil spills are bad, what is a Senator from Wisconsin doing over in California? Shouldn’t he be taking care of business in his own state?)

Senator Nelson, after many sleepless nights trying to decide what to call this special day for mother Earth, finally decided on the very original “Earth Day.” With a name in place for his special day, he only had one problem: getting people to pay attention to what he had to say. It was then that he came up with a revolutionary (I don’t know if it was revolutionary or not, but it makes for good reading.) idea: a massive nationwide “teach-in.”

The next problem that the Senator ran into was how to get people to attend his teach-in. He needed something that would get people’s attention. Something that would let people know how important this was, and in turn would make them attends this event. A lot of demand was created when an expert from Haaarvard claimed: “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless IMMEDIADTE action is taken against problems facing mankind.” Of course that statement was made about 39 years ago and here we are, still kickin’ it. That is what I call a first class fail.

The statement that Mr. Harvard makes is just the kind of thing the Senator needed to get the ball rolling. After all, the best way to publicize a teach-in is to use the time honored tradition of scare tactics! Back in the late 60’s and early 70’s the scientific community was trying to convince people of the impending doom that was global cooling. Scientists and other experts were certain that very soon the next ice age were going to commence, and if we did not act right now we would be buried up to our necks in frozen water. (Hmm….does this sound familiar to anyone? Me thinks that argument is still being peddled today, but with global warming.) In fact, some scientists claimed the only way to save us from impending doom was to melt the arctic ice cap on purpose. If that isn’t a great scare tactic, then I don’t know what is.

Another major issue back in the day that frightened people into attending the 1^st Earth Day was the “Population Bomb” theory. All the experts came to a “consensus” that the Earth was way too overcrowded and there was no way that we could ever possibly feed every hungry mouth. To go along with this scare tactic, one expert from Stanford even told people that food shortages would cause a “Great Die-off” of about 4 BILLION people within the next ten years.

All of this ado brings us to the first Earth Day celebration on April 22, 1970. Millions of people scared out of their minds by the dire predictions made by these so called “experts” took part. Schools and universities around the country organized special events in which to brain wash….ERRR… educate people about the environment. A few students at one school staged a mock trial accusing Chevrolet of destroying the earth, with Chevy being found guilty of all charges. Another group of people went around handing out tea and rice, which they claimed would be the only food that would be available during the famine years we were facing. Yet another group of people held a ceremony to award the Atomic Energy Commission with the “Environmental Rapist of the Year” award. (No doubt some of the same people who were crying over trees in this classic video took part in the first Earth Day.)

So here we are, almost 40 years later and people still celebrate Earth Day. It has spread from the U.S. to many different countries around the globe. Interestingly enough the scariest environmental catastrophes promised on the first Earth Day either never happened or have been completely discredited. My only hope is that some day in the near future the current hysteria over global warming will meet the same fate.

There you have it. You know now how the first Earth Day came about. And whatever became of Gaylord Nelson you may ask? He was voted out of office in 1980 and wasn’t heard from again. I guess he should have moved to Santa Barbara and tried to run for office there.

So go out and celebrate Earth Day by using all the energy you can. Throw away plastic bottles in the real trash; ask for paper and plastic when you buy groceries. And when one of your friends accuses you of being brain dead and not caring, just smile and enjoy the knowledge that there is a good chance they wouldn’t get the joke even if you tried to explain it to them.