Wow, did we just get a giant green tongue-bath this Earth Day!
Every April 22nd, it seems, everybody suddenly loves Mother Earth. Madonna has gone green; I know this because she's on the cover of Vanity Fair's Green Issue, just as Leonardo DiCaprio was plastered there last year. Angelina and Brad are on board the Green Love Train; People had a mention about them planting a tree or something.
Tom Cruise once hosted Earth Day on the Mall in D.C.; I saw that with my own eyes, even if it was 18 years ago and Tom hasn't said much about the earth since. Hey, for all we know, Paris Hilton gave her Hummer driver the day off and Woody Harrelson smoked some organic pot to honor the occasion.
And have you noticed the TV ads for Exxon and Shell lately? They're like Yosemite travel videos; how could we have ever doubted the sincerity and commitment of the oil companies? Not to be out-dumbed, a full-sized SUV won "Green Car of the Year" honors from—well, any group that would give an SUV a Green award has hereby relinquished any right to be named or remembered except with utter contempt.
It's not hard to love Mother Earth in late April. The daffodils are popping up, buds are on the trees, and birds are chirping. With each passing year it seems more of a miracle that the earth would, after all we've done to it, continue to bloom for us, sustain us, beseech us to come outdoors where the air is full of possibilities and baseball and live music in the parks. If you aren't moved by earthly matters at this time of year, then you are dead inside or too weird to bear thinking about.
This year, it struck me that Earth Day is the new flag lapel pin, a set-aside time wherein corporations who otherwise trash the environment hold sales offering "blowout savings" and the rest of us can feel good about ourselves because we, well, what do we do, exactly? Pick up a few cans, recycle when bins are conveniently located and walk to the corner rather than drive for our packs of smokes?
While I rationally know that hopping on the green bandwagon is better than not jumping aboard at all, I can't help but feel that these annual displays of awareness are too little too late. And, perhaps worse, they allow us (I include myself in this) the fakery of thinking we're actually doing something of substance to help the earth. What we're really doing is passing the buck to the next generation, and the generation after that.
I'm not predicting the end of the world; humanity's vanity assumes the world is coming to an end when the earth itself will be here for billions of years, even if humans aren't. What I do see is that things are going to get bad environmentally because of our paltry efforts.
We will never return to the days of cheap gas, clean drinking water and breathable air. The economic system is set up for short-term profits that maximize planetary damage.
Will we as a species tolerate less money, fewer "goods," as a permanent way of life? I don't know.
Take bottled water. Though it has a "green" vibe (comes from the earth, not tainted by human additives), it has actually been an environmental disaster. (See the May/June E Magazine cover story, "Bottled Water Backlash").
On my desk, rescued from the roadside on my last litter patrol, is a plastic bottle that contained Poland Spring "natural spring water." To get around the disaster they've created, Poland Spring touts this new "eco-shape bottle:" It "looks and feels different because it is purposely designed with an average of 30 percent less plastic to be easier on the environment."
Ha. No plastic at all would be easier on the environment! Eight out of every 10 of these "eco" bottles end up in the landfill and it takes 1,000 years for one bottle to break down. Further, Poland Springs is owned by Nestle, not known for its progressive agenda, and towns in Maine now regret having their springs drained for profits. On and on it goes.
