Foolish Cat April 22nd, 2008

Earth Day. Apparently this holiday has been around since 1970! Who knew? I honestly don’t think I heard about Earth Day before 2000. But that’s neither here nor there; the fact is I was a kid during the 70’s and 80’s and was never fortified with the idea of environmentalism.

Anyway, I’m watching a show today on PBS or something with my daughter and a public service announcement comes on regarding Earth Day. They’re specifically talking about the value of trees. “Not only are trees beautiful”, it says, “they provide homes for animals and provide the oxygen we need to breathe.” During this speech they, of course, show cute little monkeys and birds with babies and little children running and so on. Great. But right after that, they say something like, “did you know that everyday thousands of trees are cut down to provide paper to draw your pictures on? You can help save trees by using BOTH sides of the paper when you draw!”

Now, on the surface, this seems like a valid tool to impart the ideas of resource economy and alternatives to kids. But the first thing that came to my mind when I heard this - and I can’t imagine it didn’t occur to a lot of kids as well - was, “that’s true, using both sides of the paper would save trees, but do you know what would save even more trees? Not using paper at all!”

I mean what are we talking about? It isn’t like your stuff is coming off of the refrigerator and going straight to The Louvre (maybe the circular Louvre!). Some scribbley green lines for grass, a yellow sun up in the corner, stick people indicating your family and maybe a couple of “m’s” up in the sky for birds? How necessary is that? It certainly can’t be worth the price of trees! And don’t even get me started on all of those books in your room!

This, of course, is an exaggeration, but it leads to what is, in my opinion, the major dilemma of the environmental movement: who is to say what is necessary? When it comes down to it, 99.9% of everything we have and do is a luxury. We don’t need air conditioning. We don’t need indoor plumbing. We don’t need cars or televisions or churches or museums. In fact, unless it falls under the category of food, clothing, shelter, or medicine - and even then only in the most basic of forms - we don’t need it. For hundreds of thousands of years we had none of these things and managed to survive.

The fact is, in free, civilized, societies, people want more than to survive: they want to be happy. And for some, happiness is driving a Suburban or having a healthy lawn or drinking fifteen bottles of water a day. Or using another sheet of paper to draw on. And as easy as it is to say drive a Volkswagen instead, another could say drive nothing at all.

I don’t know the answer. And I guess if what Al Gore and the scientists tell me is true (I haven’t done the research so I’ll have take their words for it), we have to do something.

I do know this though: either way, the Earth will be just fine, it’s the things living on it that will be screwed.

Happy Earth Day, Fools!

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