Ideas Have Consequences. Bad Ideas Have Bad Consequences. Earth Day Reflections

Eight or nine days ago we celebrated Earth Day, touting the importance of taking care of this Third Rock from the Sun, Spaceship Earth.I personally concur with the idea of taking care of our world, being wise custodians of our home planet and its natural resources.

Being good steward of the earth and caring about people should not be mutually exclusive. This is what scares me when I read quotes like this one by John Davis, editor of Earth First! "Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs.” That just flies in the face of everything I believe about the value of people. Clearly we're witnessing a collision of worldviews in our time.

Here are some quotes by well-known people who have been leaders of the Green movement. If you take their pronouncements to heart, it scares me that there may be people who might actually be cheering the loss of life taking place as a result of our current pandemic.

“I suspect that eradicating smallpox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems.” — John Davis, editor of Earth First! Journal

"The crippling human cover spread over the living layer of the Earth must forcibly be made lighter: breathing holes must be punctured in this blanket and the ecological footprint of man brushed away. Forms of boastful consumption must violently be crushed, the natality of the species violently controlled, and the number of those already born violently reduced — by any means possible." — Pentti Linkola, Can Life Prevail?: A Revolutionary Approach to the Environmental Crisis. page 170

"Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental."
--Dave Forman, founder of Earth First

“We have wished, we ecofreaks, for a disaster or for a social change to come and bomb us into the Stone Age, where we might live like Indians in our valley, with our localism, our appropriate technology, our gardens, our homemade religion-guilt-free at last!”
--Stewart Brand (writing in the Whole Earth Catalogue)

“The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing… This is not to say that the rise of human civilization is insignificant, but there is no way of showing that it will be much help to the world in the long run.” --Economist editorial

“Human happiness, and certainly human fecundity, is not as important as a wild and healthy planet… Some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”
—David Graber, biologist, National Park Service

Is COVID-19 anything like your "right virus" Mr. Graber? If you did not say this, I will remove it.

Here's another quote that seems especially disconcerting, in light of these present times.
“If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”--Prince Phillip, World Wildlife Fund

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I'm curious if these people have any regrets about such ridiculous assertions? 

What do you think?

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Related Links
Earth Day: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
Speaking For Themselves
Could These Be Lines from Avengers Infinity War Part 2?

Earth Day Gallery Hop Is This Weekend -- PLUS More Art and Music To Lift Your Spirits and Touch Your Souls

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Next Friday, April 27

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River Memories -- Cleveland's Cuyahoga River Fire Department

The first years of my life I grew up in a suburb of Cleveland called Maple Heights. It was a new development with new houses and new families, and lots of kids to play baseball and football with. The elementary school was a half block away, and beyond there was a forest, and great places to go sledding.

Nearly all my memories from that time are good ones. The 1950s was something of an age of innocence for kids like me. Only later did I come to learn that not everyone grew up with such a carefree existence.

There are, however, many experiences that we have that lay dormant and unremembered, but they are in there, only awaiting a trigger to unwrap them. One of these for me was our class trip to one of the fire station on the Cuyahoga River. That's right. The river had a fire department with four fire stations because this river was so polluted it would catch on fire.

One memory from that time was a political cartoon in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It showed a man and his son fishing from a little boat that was being eaten by chemicals as they sank. An editorial that day talked about how there were no fish left in Lake Erie because of the pollution and that the great lake's beaches were closed because the water was no longer safe for swimming. Something needed to be done.

Strange how far along the river's condition had gone before it was recognized that something needed to be done.

Here in Duluth the One River, Many Stories project has been in full swing with its focus on the St. Louis River upon whose shores reside the Twin Ports of Duluth and Superior. As a result of attending a few of their meetings my memory of the Cuyahoga and that class trip to the river's fire station came up to the surface. I was probably in fifth or sixth grade at the time. And the stat I remember most vividly was that the river had caught fire four times that year.

Reflecting on that experience I decided to do a Google search to see how accurate all this was. Turns out that the quality of life for that river was far more shocking than I'd realized, and this fire business went on for a far longer time frame than I'd imagined. According to this story in Time the Cuyahoga's woes became a catalyst to draw attention to all our nation's waterways. In 1969.

My class trip was in 1962 or '63. And the river had been catching fire since the 1930s, if not earlier. That stat from this Tony Long article was my biggest surprise. The river had been catching fire all my life. Fortunately, those fire stations are now closed and Lake Erie is now living. The lesson there is that things really can change when people put their minds to it.

Today it's the 46th anniversary of Earth Day. Here in the Twin Ports they celebrate with an annual Art for Earth Day Gallery Hop. As we think about the future, let's remember: "We've come a long ways, baby."

Photo Credit: Photo from Time.com story shows a fireboat tug putting out a fire on the Cuyahoga in 1952. Used without permission and will be replaced if requested. 

Yahoo! Buzz

If you're ever short of a subject to talk about at the water cooler and seeking ideas, one place to look is online to see what people are interested in today. Your first stop might be Yahoo! Buzz, which updates hourly so you can stay pretty up to the minute. This morning, the top ten searches were:

American Idol
Julie Chen
Susan Boyle
Iran
China
Gliese 581 D
Dancing With The Stars
Sri Lanka
Earth Day
Arsenal

One can immediately see a pattern here. Despite protestations that the Internet's a universe of its own, independent of the outside culture, quick analysis shows that pop media drives much that occurs online. American Idol and Dancing with the Stars are, of course, TV shows. Susan Boyle is from a British TV show Who's Got Talent. Julie Chen is a TV personality. (They're buzzing because, like whoa, wow... she's pregnant.) Earth Day made the list today because, in case you didn't know, today is Earth Day.

The big news in astronomy is Gliese 581 D, a planet slightly larger than earth which might be capable of sustaining life if it weren't so near to the sun of its own solar system. The planet was discovered in 2007 but Earth Day seemed like a good day to break the news about another earthlike planet.

The arsenal search listed here is actually a reference to Arsenal, a soccer team which just had a major match against Liverpool, a sports driven story.

Google has its own version of the Buzz called Hot Trends. Likewise updated every hour, these were the top ten hot trends as of 27 minutes ago:

1.
bacon bra
2.
katmai sinking
3.
earth day facts
4.
hashima island
5.
ignoramus
6.
meteor shower
7.
if i can t have you
8.
the phone
9.
google profile
10.
bobby jones

Clearly we have a different breed of user over at Google, though I couldn't explain why that is. The Google list is one hundred items long and for the life of me why people are searching for some of these terms I haven't a clue. mutombo is #22. coroflot is #49. And 1863 is #58. Why not 1861 or 1897?

Say, I have an idea. Why don't we all search for Ennyman today? Then everyone else will wonder, "What's that all about? Who's Ennyman?"

Or, we can all go on our way and note what everyone else is buzzing about today. Happy Earth Day, everyone.

Last Night I Saw Pleiades

Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising thro' the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I have my grandparents to thank for the appreciation I have for the night sky, a living wonder that so many now take for granted. Back in the 50's they belonged to a chapter of the Sky and Telescope Society that made telescopes and studied the heavens above.

If we had to list our favorite wonders there, I have no doubt our lists would vary. Here are my favorite three things I can see with the naked eye. With a telescope I think the planets and their moons are the ultimate, especially the rings of Saturn. But I don't use the telescope much, and since I live on a country road with no light posts, I see a wonderful array of visuals when it's crisp and clear here up north.

Nevertheless, wherever I am, the three things I most quickly identify with are the constellations Orion, Cassiopeia and the Pleiades. The Pleadies are especially fun, if you please. You probably know Orion. It's the Hunter who appears in the fall and glides along the southern perimeter of the winter night sky. And Cassiopeia is the semi-large "W' that you see pretty much year 'round, usually to the northeast.

What I like about the Pleiades is their subtlety. They are not that easy to see, yet are always there, twinkling, glittering as it were, like a sparkling light show.

I used to think the Pleiades (plea-uh-deez) was a group of seven stars, but have since learned they are many.

They are evidently 440 light years from Earth. Though they appear to be a cluster of stars all dancing with one another, they are actually about seven light years apart from one another. And even though they are not very bright to us here, they are from forty to a thousand times brighter than our Sun, which means from there we are pretty much non-existent.

You may recognize the names of these original seven sisters: Alcyone, Atlas, Electra, Maia, Merope, Taygeta and Pleione. All are visible to the keen naked eye. But there's much more there than meets the eye.

I dreamed I saw the Pleiades alive as you or me...

alive with incandescent light

searching for infinity,

flick'ring soft in the dark winter night

in glorious tranquility.

On Behalf of Mama Earth

Earth Day, April 22, came and went again this week. According to one source twenty million people celebrated the first Earth Day in 1970. President Nixon gave us the Environmental Protection Agency that year and Congress amended the Clean Air Act to set national air quality, auto emissions, and anti-pollution standards.

I am still curious why the so-called "founders" of Earth Day 1970 actually switched it from the Vernal Equinox, which has been historically honored as Earth Day for more than three thousand years, at least in the Northern Hemisphere. When Secretary-General U Thant in 1971 signed a U.N. Earth Day Proclamation on March 21, 1971, he must not have been paying attention to those press releases the year before that announced it had been moved to April 22.

For me personally, I don’t really care what date is officially Earth Day. What's more important is a lifestyle commitment. If you still pour out your used motor oil in the back yard, I don’t care how many Earth Day ceremonies you’ve been to, you obviously don’t “get it.”

There’s a school of philosophy that says in essence “what is is what is.” It is a somewhat fatalistic approach to life and reality. It implies powerlessness, as if to say that we have no power to change things, so why bother, as if we are victims of Fate.

I would suggest that we have far more power than we realize to make a difference. It begins with this commitment: I will do what I can in the realms where I am able.

I’m not trying to make this into a moral issue. But in point of fact, if human beings don't take care of the earth, you won’t see sheep, chimps or elephants stepping up to take the lead. The responsibility is ours, both collectively and individually.

SHAMELESS PLUG FOR MY COMPANY
What this means is, we need to learn more about what we can do. We’ve all seen the lists. Turn lights off in unoccupied rooms, use energy-efficient appliances, etc. One item not usually listed is to use a premium synthetic oil and extend intervals between oil changes. Fact: AMSOIL synthetic motor oils last longer than conventional petroleum motor oils. The net benefits to our environment on this alone include less packaging waste and less waste oil to dispose of.

But the benefits of AMSOIL synthetics go further than this. The best synthetics clean the engine so it runs in a more optimal manner. The net result is improved fuel economy. That is, cars can use less fuel to go the same distance. If every car and truck were switched to premium synthetic motor oils, the savings alone would enable a vehicle could go to the sun and back (186 million miles round trip) so many times that it would blow your mind.

I am not makng this up.