Posted on 04/24/2014 4:20:23 AM PDT by Kaslin
This week marks the 44th anniversary of Earth Day. In years past, the day has been marked with great media fanfare and attention. This week, it marched by with little mention. This is not so much a reflection of any lack of interest in the Earth, but a reflection of how mainstream and ongoing the topics of recycling, reclaiming and sustainability have become. They are now part of our daily lives, rather than a topic to be raised once a year.
For the first Earth Day, in 1970, the Keep America Beautiful organization ran a commercial that portrayed what appeared to be an American Indian crying over the pollution that littered our country. Later, we found out the actor was neither an Indian nor was he crying. However, the visual of an American Indian shedding a tear over the destruction wrought by pollution remains seared in my mind.
In 1971, I joined my parents and older sister in the second annual Earth Day by picking up litter in Carrollton, Ga. Dozens of us turned out in jeans and sneakers on that sunny April day -- walking along the side of the road, picking up trash and putting it into garbage bags. The most memorable piece of trash we picked up was a toilet seat. Why someone had thrown it out on the side of the road, I have no idea, but when we were done, it was gone. After we filled each bag, we tied a knot in the top and left it to be picked up by a truck.
At the end of the day, I looked back and saw the grass by the side of the road, once covered with litter, now clean and green, and I felt good. We had accomplished something, we had made a difference; the world was a bit better off.
You might wonder why I was involved in the environment at age 4 going on 5. Did hippies raise me? No, my father -- who favored long sideburns and turtleneck shirts -- was an environmental studies professor at West Georgia College. In addition to picking up trash, he led us canoeing in the Okefenokee Swamp, camping on Cumberland Island and hiking in North Georgia. During the summers, our family would vacation at Cheaha State Park in Alabama, swimming in ice-cold, spring-fed pools and hiking to the top of the mountain for picnics of ham-and-cheese sandwiches. I was raised to appreciate and love the Earth, our home and the provider of our natural resources.
As a conservative, I believe conservatives should lead the conservation movement -- not through government control and regulation, but through an understanding of and appreciation for the beauty and benefits of nature. My husband and I both believe in the importance of saving land, clean water and places for children -- and adults -- to play outdoors.
Toward that end, we have long been involved in the Trust for Public Land, a non-profit focused on saving land for people. In Georgia, its members have worked to protect the land around the Chattahoochee River, improve the quality of water and provide people with access to undeveloped land.
The trust's Parks for People program is focused on increasing the number and accessibility of public parks. The focus in the metro Atlanta area is the Beltline project, which "is a sustainable redevelopment project that will provide a network of public parks, multi-use trails and transit along a historic 22-mile railroad corridor circling downtown and connecting many neighborhoods directly to each other," according to the Atlanta Beltline website. The newest project is Proctor Creek, an in-town waterway that connects the Atlanta Beltline with the Chattahoochee River.
Exposure to the natural environment reduces stress and helps us focus. We need nature -- and nature needs us -- to treat it well. Additionally, we need to redefine sustainable living as something that sustains us not only environmentally but also economically. If we cannot figure out how to create a sustainable economic model along with a sustainable environmental model, then any fix won't last -- just ask any company or individual facing bankruptcy.
Even government officials have to figure out how to finance expenditures over time, either through additional taxes or by printing additional money, which fuels inflation and lowers purchasing power.
Meanwhile, our goal should be to treat the Earth, our home created for us by God, with kindness and love while creating economic and environmental sustainability.
Earth Day Nonsense
If you didn’t realize it, yesterday was Earth Day. Founded back in 1970, this event was created to foster support for environmental protection. (Coincidentally, it’s also the day communists celebrate the birthday of Vladimir Lenin.) Chances are you saw some news reports on the joys of recycling and other such fluff. Personally, I find such Earth Day nonsense quite tiresome as the environmental movement went from wanting to stop pollution to full-tilt insane in a few decades.
One of the Earth Day consequences that we have is the EPA, which liberals and eco-nuts will gleefully remind us was signed into law by Richard Nixon. However, one of the most pertinent facts that liberals leave out of their diatribes is that, at the time, such an organization was needed. I was born in 1970 and remember how pollution was much more a fact of life when I was a child. As God gave us the Earth, it serves us to be good stewards of our charge. I do not want pollution fouling the water or the air, and I believe in protect nature as best as possible. However, unlike the environment nuts of today, I don’t put nature above human lives.
The fact is that environmentalists were quite successful. They preached to us to not waste or pollute, and we have modified our society to accommodate that. This success had an unintended consequence for eco-nuts. What to do when they actually win? The answer is that they latched onto an even more religious zeal to promote uber-environmentalism. No longer was it good enough to stop pollution, we now had to stifle all development, lest the smallest creature or plant in Gaia’s domain be injured.
That leads us to the sad state of affairs today. The EPA is out of control, going after people who put an artificial pond on their own property that local and state officials have no environmental impact at all. People are not allowed to build on their property due to some nebulous definition of wetlands. The timber industry in the Northwest has been gutted to the fact that entire forests are now off limits to being harvested. (I guess nobody told environmentalists that wood is a renewable resource.)
Our energy industry is under attack. Coal, oil, and nuclear power are being stopped by rampant lawsuits and dire predictions of environmental catastrophe. The latest blow is that President Obama delayed the Keystone Pipeline yet again due to that an eco-loon, billionaire Tom Steyer, pledge $100 million to liberal candidates if Obama would do so.
What is frustrating is that these environmental whack jobs are not pro-nature as much as they are anti-human. They are utter hypocrites as they rail against power and technology, but gladly live in a country where they take advantage of such benefits. They’ll blog about the evils of the oil industry from their iPads while sipping lattes in an air-conditioned Starbucks. Yet for many in the world, they exist without power or running water. They yearn to reap the benefits of having electricity and the healthy, modern level of living that we enjoy here in the West. Yet when some project is proposed to build a new power plant or dam a river to generate power, these environmental idiots come out in full force, decrying the proposed plans and shutting them down. They then retreat to their comfortable existence while those who have to live in the primitive areas are forced to live in squalor and disease.
I saw a report the other day that blew my mind. It stated that 20 million children in India have schools that have no restrooms. India has a huge health problem in that many people defecate in the streets due to a shocking lack of plumbing. Yet this is the world that extreme environmentalists want us to live in. They value a single plant over the health and well being of a child. Millions can die from malaria that could be ended if DDT is brought back, but these sick people would rather weep tears over a baby seal over the deaths of small children.
http://rightwingpatriot.com/earth-day-nonsense/
Believers in God are the denizens and caretakers of the Earth. The fake environmentalists are a mockery of them, and only have political interests in mind instead. They use it as a club to beat others over the head with.
“Fetus Day”
Do you think THAT would ever catch on?
Just a thought to counter the “Dirt Good, People Bad” crowd.
Funny guy that Stalin. He was a mass murderer and a party animal to boot.
In celebration of Earth Day, I cut down a tree.
“Jewish Bolshevik dictator” Lenin was about as much a Jew as a KKK Kleagle is a Christian.
Stalin hated Jews as much as Hitler. Only difference is he would use them for his own ends before killing him....He killed off all of the Jewish Bolsheviks, like Zinoviev, Kamenev and Trotsky.
I’m not interested in what spawn of Newt has to say.
*shrug*
I just ignore it
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