It isn't actually a holiday, just a commemorative day, but I believe we should rethink our position on this one. To me, Earth Day should be a full-fledged holiday, like Memorial Day, or Veterans Day, but more important; like Presidents' Day or Columbus Day, but more meaningful. No, we need a day to stop and think about the Earth.
We've only got one, and we're killing it.
Now, for all of you doubters and deniers: get over yourself. You're a huge part of the problem. Global warming is a fact, the ice caps are melting, islands are being lost and soon coastal regions will start flooding; we're acidifying the oceans and desertifying the rainforest regions; we're polluting the air, poisoning our water supply (and ourselves) and destabilizing the earth's crust in places (cf. fracking). You can say it ain't so, but you're wrong. You can believe that humans aren't the problem, but you're wrong. As my main man George Carlin was fond of saying, "you're here, you're guilty, end of story."
What gets me more than anything else is the justification of our ignorance and ignoring: to give ourselves better lives. How oxymoronic can you get? Oh sure, in the short term, some of the obscenely rich will get richer, and most of the obscenely poor will even more obscenely poor. Our lives are not going to get better folks. There is no way they can.
The simple truth of the matter is that the earth is a finite time-space entity. Acting as if it is infinite is, in simplest terms, stupid. But that's what we're doing. The developed world is consuming too many resources in improper ways with catastrophic results. The undeveloped world thinks the developed world knows what it's doing, but it doesn't. Things aren't looking good, folks.
It really is time to think about setting aside at least one day to reflect upon our own suicidal insanity. Earth Day would be the perfect day, but we missed our opportunity again. I wonder how many more we really have.
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