On Earth Day, Forget About the Planet -- We're the Ones Who Are Screwed

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



On Earth Day, Forget About the Planet -- We're the Ones Who Are Screwed

By Joseph Romm, Climate Progress. Posted April 22, 2009.

Affection for our planet is misdirected and unrequited. We need to focus on saving ourselves. It's time to dump Earth Day.




Dumping Earth Day has been on my mind for a year now -- and all the more so today because the NYT magazine just published an interview with our Nobel-prize winning Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, in which he says:

I would say that from here on in, every day has to be Earth Day.

Well, duh! Heck, we have a whole day just for the trees -- and we haven’t finished them off … yet. So if every day is Earth Day, than April 22 definitely needs a new name.

I don’t worry about the earth. I’m pretty certain the earth will survive the worst we can do to it. I’m very certain the earth doesn’t worry about us. I’m not alone. People got more riled up when scientists removed Pluto from the list of planets than they do when scientists warn that our greenhouse gas emissions are poised to turn the earth into a barely habitable planet.

Arguably, concern over the earth is elitist, something people can afford to spend their time on when every other need is met. But elitism is out these days. Only bitter environmentalists cling to Earth Day. We need a new way to make people care about the nasty things we’re doing with our cars and power plants. At the very least, we need a new name. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/137586/on_earth_day%2C_forget_about_the_planet_--_we%27re_the_ones_who_are_screwed/

[Buzz Clik]

1. Jeebus Heffing Cristo. Where's the :sarcasm:?

"I don’t worry about the earth. I’m pretty certain the earth will survive the worst we can do to it."

Okey dokey.

[marmar]

2. Actually, I tend to agree with the author.....Long after the earth has gotten rid of its disruptors,

..... disruptors being human beings, it will come back into balance on its own.

[zipplewrath]

3. As do I

The "earth" will always be here. It will always be populated with life. The only question is whether we'll be one of those lives. It's not "save the earth", it's "don't screw it up and kill ourselves". If we disappear, the waters will eventually clear, the air will eventually clear as well. New animals will rise, that can tolerate the pollution we do manage to leave behind. They find life in some of the harshest places on the planet. We "save the snail darter" because it's part of the food chain that feeds us. We protect wildlife habitats because it's part of the ecosystem that cleans our air, our water, and generates the fundamental features of the food chain. It just so happens it also happens to support the Florida Panther. Think of them as our own "mine canary". What's good for them is good for us.

[salguine]

5. Are you kidding? When people say "We're killing the Earth! We're killing the Earth!" I just

laugh. We're not killing the Earth. We're killing US. When it reaches that point, the Earth will eventually shake us off like a bad cold. And once we're gone, the Earth will set about healing itself.

[bertman]

6. You nailed it, salguine.

[caraher]

4. He's spot-on

The problem is convincing people that it's not all about hugging trees, it's about saving our collective asses. Not messing with the environment is deep down the only truly "conservative" position one can take. We know that we as a species can thrive in this one, but don't know what happens to us if we change it significantly; it's simple caution to try to preserve the climate as it is (or as near to that as we can manage).

Life on earth will go on without us, no matter how badly we screw ourselves (and many, many other species of life). As good as we can be at messing up ecosystems, we are nowhere near the ability to destroy all life on Earth, let alone the planet itself. Earth Day is not about the planet, it's about us.

If we do manage to kill ourselves off - heck, even every creature on the planet - there's still life in the deep oceans, and evolution. It may take hundreds of millions of years for anything like what we have now to re-emerge, but life Earth has plenty of time for a comeback before the Sun swallows the planet.

[Buzz Clik]

7. Did you people really read this?

If God hadn’t wanted us to dominate all living creatures on the earth, he wouldn’t have sent that asteroid in the first place, and he wouldn’t have turned the dead plants and animals into fossil carbon that could power our Industrial Revolution, destroy the climate, and ultimately kill more plants and animals.

Sorry, but either this is poorly written sarcastic commentary or the author simply has great difficulty focusing on facts.

The reason that many environmentalists fight to save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or the polar bears is not because they are sure that losing those things would cause the universe to become unhinged, but because they realize that humanity isn’t smart enough to know which things are linchpins for the entire ecosystem and which are not. What is the straw that breaks the camel’s back? The 100th species we wipe out? The 1,000th? For many, the safest and wisest thing to do is to try to avoid the risks entirely.

This is where I part company with many environmentalists. With 6.5 billion people going to 9 billion, much of the environment is unsavable. But if we warm significantly more than 2°C from pre-industrial levels -- and especially if we warm more than 4°C, as would be all but inevitable if we keep on our current emissions path for much longer -- then the environment and climate that made modern human civilization possible will be ruined, probably for hundreds of years. And that means misery for many if not most of the next 10 to 20 billion people to walk the planet.

So I think the world should be more into conserving the stuff that we can’t live without. In that regard I am a conservative person. Unfortunately, Conservative Day would, I think, draw the wrong crowds.

The problem with Earth Day is it asks us to save too much ground. We need to focus. The two parts of the planet worth fighting to preserve are the soils and the glaciers.

Not worried about the air? Hold your breath, dude.

[bananas]

8. The original version starts out differently

http://climateprogress.org/2009/04/19/renameearth-day-humor-triage-i-told-you-so-homo-sapiens-sapiens-global-warming/

Last year, I wrote a piece for Salon, “Let’s dump ‘Earth’ Day.” It was supposed to be mostly humorous. Or mostly serious. Anyway, the subject of renaming Earth Day has been on my mind for a year now — and all the more so today because the NYT magazine just published an interview with our Nobel-prize winning Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, in which he says:

I would say that from here on in, every day has to be Earth Day.

Well, duh! Heck, we have a whole day just for the trees — and we haven’t finished them off … yet. So if every day is Earth Day, than April 22 definitely needs a new name. So I’m updating the column, with yet another idea at the end, at least for climate science advocates:

<snip>

[Buzz Clik]

9. A far better introduction.

[MasonJar]

10. Unless humans change the Earth and its non human inhabitants

will be decidedly better off when we kill ourselves off. However, we are taking too many species with us. Hence it is crucial that we adjust to help the Earth and mankind survive in a sensible manner.