Let's Talk About the Earth, Baby

Yeah, yeah, I know I'm a day late. I just couldn't face it yesterday, what with the general air of self-satisfied smugness oozing from all those environmentalists' chemical-free pores.

This is what I got to say:

1. The earth is 4.5 billion years old. So far hominids have been here, what, 3.5 million? Do the math. The difference is akin to the affect a pin prick to your pinkey has on the millions of nerve cells in your entire body. The earth was here long before we were. It will be here long after we are gone. We can blast it all we want, but, like the cockroach and dandelion, it will not die back entirely. Until it is ready. Then, it will simply burn itself out. And if you can stop that, well, you must be God.

2. The earth is not static. It is fluid, flexible, ever changing. Hundreds of thousands of species over the eons have gone extinct with no help from us whatsoever. Well, you say, that was Mother Nature working. But isn't Man part of Mother Nature? Were we not created out of the same evolutionary forces? Who made us the sole blight?

3. So does that mean we have license to party like it's 1999 and crap all over our home? Uh, no.

4. But, tell me, who is to blame for our current polluted, denuded, over-cooked predicament? The BIG CORPORATIONS backed by the UNFEELING REPUBLICANS who blithely refuse to be the pusher man for alternative fuels? Uh, no. If you don't think Al Gore et al are just as beholden to their own economic interests as the republicans are to big oil, then I've got some land in a former Nevada test site I'd like to sell you.

5. So who is responsible for our current predicament? We are – that's you plus me. The little guy who packs a powerful punch, whose demand creates the supply. We want to live in 5,000 square foot Taco Bell mansions in the middle of nowhere instead of moving back to the cities and learning to get along with our brethren. We want to breed with abandon. We want to drive our big cars and travel the globe. We want to purchase stuff.

6. Is this right or is this wrong? To me, it's neither. Because I do not believe it is ethical to legislate lifestyle choices or subjugate individual civil liberties in favor of the greater good.

7. Why? Because I do not believe there is a greater good. Again, we face a problem of definition here. Who gets to decide what that good is? Hundreds of people over the ages have tried, not just to define it, but to also put it into practice. Let's trip lightly through a short list of those busy little bees, shall we?

Caligula
Muhammad
Louis XIV
Catherine the Great
Stalin
Hitler
Castro
Pol Pot
Kim Jong-il
George W. Bush

You can put that in your pipe, take it to a public park, and smoke it. Well, uh, okay, so you can't. But you can go clean up your own yard.