Let’s kill
Earth Day.
The kill
doesn’t have to be violent. A few means of termination come to mind
immediately: a fatal dose of unctuousness with a dollop of messianic fervor;
toxic buildup of evangelical environmentalism; or suffocation by smugness.
Let me know
if you have some other methods of moral euthanasia you can summon to the cause.
(There. I
feel better already now that I’ve exhaled and typed this long-overdue death
sentence.)
“Oh,” you
protest. “How could you? How can you be so cruel and callous toward Mother
Earth? We have no Planet B, you know.”
Spare me.
My coveted role
as judge, jury, and executioner has nothing whatsoever to do with Mother Earth,
climate change, global warming, denialism, science or anti-science, or political
correctness or impolitic incorrectness. And lest you think my words are a sly
endorsement of our Not My President (NMP), you can forget that. I condemn and
abhor NMP’s choice to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and NMP’s
proposed budgetary slashes and rollbacks of environmental initiatives of the
last several decades.
No, my gripe
goes like this: Earth Day is a feckless, feel-good escape, a chance to feel environmentally
holy. Sure, many of the priests and priestesses of this secular religion practice
their rituals the other 364 days of the year. But the annual cleanup rites typically
take place around Earth Day. Earth Day incarnates a branding that has become
tired, ungreen, and more harmful than helpful. It’s not, um, sustainable. Earth
Day is not unlike waltzing to the soup kitchen on Thanksgiving and handing out
turkeys. Good for one day, maybe even a week. What has changed? Not much. But
nothing bad happened either, etc.
What about
those cleanups? Don’t they make you feel grand? Is it the same feeling of
sanctity and squeaky-clean absolution I felt as a teenager after going to
Confession, with all my impure thoughts scrubbed off my soul for all eternity?
And what
about these armies of the day making the world safe for carbon footprints?
Picture legions of students or retirees, civic leaders and teachers, work gloves
and trash bags in hand, whisked in from their pristine golf-course-riddled
suburbs to save the unwashed urban masses from themselves.
How can we
ever thank you? How can we ever thank you enough?
For the
record, I hate litter. It is contemptuous of civil order, an act of apparent self-loathing
and belligerent degradation. Or maybe littering is simply callous solipsism. I
cannot claim to fathom its sociological origins or its embrace of cavalier
negligence. I’ll leave that to sociologists. But I have a perverse fantasy.
During one of these jaunty, community-spirited Earth Day cleanups, I crave for
the volunteers to encounter directly a besmirching of the aforementioned civil
order. I want the corps of cleaners to see a pizza box or overpackaged burger
and fries go flying out a car window, with an added toss of soda-fountain
beverage containers, extra large, with straws, napkins, and plastic bags
sailing down the boulevard. I crave for the perps and the enforcers to meet
head-on. Have at it, boys and girls. Send me a transcript of your friendly
dialogue.
Maybe you’ll
have better luck than I do. (I may meet my demise one day via one of these
uncivil encounters.)
You say Earth Day is about more than Saturday-morning community
service cleanups? True, true. I cannot argue with you on that. You won’t get me
to condemn tree or flower plantings, or springtime prunings or fertilizations.
I can see such acts as commensurate with tender memorial tree plantings
honoring deceased loved ones.
As for the deceased? Add Earth Day to the rolls. Rest in peace.
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