Posted on 04/22/2023 6:01:46 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Saturday will mark the 53rd anniversary of Earth Day, one full spin of the globe in which we are expected to celebrate the modern environmental movement. Yet that great cause, if we may paraphrase Eric Hoffer, became a business, then degenerated into a racket that not only became a haven for grifters but also a platform for scolds and eco-religion zealots. We strongly suggest that rather than spend a day exalting the inanimate Gaia, the West should mark it with recognition of how far human progress has brought us.
Closely related to Earth Day is Earth Hour, usually the last Saturday in March each year when the lights of “landmarks and homes across the world” are to be turned off from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm local time.
The usual scolds expect us “to spend 60 minutes doing something – anything – positive for our planet.” In other words, plunge the world back into pre-modern times. This might be productive if the point were to show how far man has come – and how far he will go backward if the green zealots get their way. Instead, it’s an opportunity to virtue signal and hector.
Economist Mark J. Perry has long suggested that we use Earth Day – which has become an airing of progressive grievances, which can be addressed only through leftist public policy – to “appreciate our fossil fuel energy treasures that come from the Earth’s natural environment.”
After all, Earth is where we’ve found the raw materials we needed to protect ourselves from the hostile environment around us and to pull ourselves out of poverty. It’s as if they had been stored there for us to use. Without energy provided by fossil fuels, man would not have advanced far beyond where he was just before the Industrial Revolution.
Let’s remember this by leaving the lights on and taking advantage of the blessings of the internal-combustion engine, an invention that has liberated man like no other.
Unlike solar and wind, which the green narrative insists will replace fossil fuels and make the world a better place, hydrocarbons are cheap and reliable. Also unlike solar and wind, they are here now, powering economies across the world. (Those two intermittent forms of energy produced a mere 10% of global electricity in 2021. When hydropower is added, it appears as if renewables make a much larger contribution, but we can’t count on that power in the future because the political left hates dams and would rather they be taken down.)
At the same time we should also remember this: While the fawning-over-anything-green media will credit the environmental movement for the improvements we’ve seen since that first Earth Day, the truth is, as we wrote in an editorial at Investor’s Business Daily in 2009 that is no longer available online:
“The world, especially in developed nations, is a cleaner — and greener — place than it was when the environmental movement began,” because “through wealth generated by the free market, we have enough resources to move beyond the subsistence economies that damage the environment, enough disposable income to fund clean-up programs, enough wealth to scrub and polish industry.”...
To celebrate Earth Day I plan to take a scenic drive in my V-8 Supercharged sedan and enjoy the sound of 668 horsepower.
The sun didn’t make wind turbines.
Happy Lenin’s Birthday.
I’ll turn on my lights and do laundry. Glo-bull warming is dumping snow on me today and net Tuesday/Wenesday.
I do think Earth Hour barbecues should become a tradition.
“The Earth’s Cooling Climate,” Science News, November 15, 1969.• “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age,” Washington Post, January 11, 1970.• “Science: Another Ice Age?” Time Magazine, June 24, 1974.• “The Ice Age Cometh!” Science News, March 1, 1975.• “The Cooling World,” Newsweek, April 28, 1975.• “Scientists Ask Why World Climate is Changing; Major Cooling May Be Ahead,” New York Times, May 21, 1975.• “In the Grip of a New Ice Age?” International Wildlife July-August, 1975.• “A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable,” New York Times, September 14, 1975.• “Variations in the Earth’s Orbit, Pacemaker of the Ice Ages,” Science magazine, December 10, 1976.
I’m gunna fire up my lawn mower and just let it run in the back yard all day.
I may burn a big brush pile that needs to be burnt. Should I light it with an old tire?
I’m gonna fire up the old gas grill and barbeque some steaks that night. What better way to show your love for mutha Earf. Maybe have some lawn tractor races under the lights afterwards.
I use diesel fuel.
It burns slower but it gets the job done. I keep a few gallons of diesel on hand just to start fires of stuff that might be a little damp
Interesting that Elon Musk’s Space-X Starship is propelled by natural gas (Methane). Maybe he should put a banner on the side of it that reads “POWERED BY NATURAL GAS”, and rename it NG1.
I need to pick up some gardening supplies today, so the pickup truck with the big block gas V8 will get an outing. Got to feed the plants with CO2!
You should use a SMOKER at your barbecue just to drive the point home.
Gaia-worship is idolatry for the 21st century... Gaia worshipers are no better than the wankers who used to worship Bael and Moloch.
Bud light platinum and internal combustion motors.
I plan to piss off everyone
That sounds suspiciously like a Cadillac with an LT4 motor
Yep. Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing with the hand-built LT4. The plaque on the engine says it was built by Anthony Terry. I just got back from my drive to celebrate Erf Day.
Latrice Carothers built my LT4 (retirement car)
2800 miles on my ZL-1 they sound glorious enjoy!
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