It would have been easy to miss the fact that it’s Earth Day. It doesn’t get much attention anyway, and that’s a shame. If there’s one thing we all have in common, it’s that we live on Earth.
But as we live in a world where our atmosphere is increasingly out of whack, where coyotes and cougars are more commonly seen in suburban neighborhoods, where there are cities so polluted they literally shorten the lives of the inhabitants, where the water isn’t doing much better than the land, where we are forced to buy expensive fuels that foul our air from nations that don’t like us very much (and yet some complain that somehow it would hurt the economy to change that), we probably ought to pay more attention.
Today, the President told us that we can improve our environment and our economy at the same time by converting to renewable energy. Yesterday, conservative hot-spot South Dakota approved a $700 million wind farm. Around the world, millions of people are celebrating Earth Day, even if most Americans wouldn’t know it.
Whether you respect our planet as the creation of God, or merely a place we humans cannot live without, give a thought for Earth Day.
In Closing: Why is anybody shocked that the President wants to see to it that laws are followed?; on black swans and not black swans; if waterboarding works, how come we had to do it to one guy over 180 times in one month?; Business Week asks how much we’ll lose on TARP, but the answer is most of it; 5 tips for applying for an SBA loan, but all you need is #5 (be prepared to put up the house); how Canadian banks avoided the worst of our problems; universal health as a stimulus plan; loan modification plans as a bank windfall; believe it or not the rate of Chapter 13 bankruptcy is down; our “conservative” Supreme Court limits the rights of cops to search cars on pure traffic stops; note the huge gap between top quintile income and top 1% income and then tell me how taxing the top earners is bad (boohoo, get a tax shelter); credit card fee reforms might actually happen (and benefit consumers); and last, our thoughts go to the family of David Kellermann, who took the coward’s resignation from Freddie Mac last night.
Thanks for the Earth Day post! I remember the first Earth Day when I was a kid back in 1970, and my dad took us kids out to help out with a community-wide project where a bunch of us picked up trash along the local riverbanks. We participated in community Earth Day events for several years after that. Even though my parents were conservatives, it made no difference back then. Helping the environment was something everyone could agree on back then.