EARTH DAY

Sun Apr 22 16:15:40 EDT 2001

GREETINGS:

Wayne Hsu sent this message to Bird Chat.  I can think
of no finer tribute to the reasons why 31 years ago a
handful of us started something that has tried to
reshape the world.  I know that it has redirected and
reshaped my life.  It saddens me however to see that
we are still fighting the good fight for all of the
same issues 31 years later!  Moreover we are on the
brink of having major setbacks if not a complete
defeat in the next 2-3 years.  We need to use a
responsible dialogue based on science in order to halt
this irresponsible trend.

Yours for the environment,

Bob Parcelles, Jr.
Pinellas Park, FL

******************************************************
PLEASE EXCUSE ANY CROSS-POSTING

This article was written for last year's earth day.
Donella Meadows has since passed away but the message
in this article still resonates. read in 
commemoration  of earth day!

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EARTH DAY PLUS THIRTY, AS SEEN BY THE EARTH
By Donella Meadows, adjunct professor at Dartmouth 
College.

     If, in the thirty Earth Day celebrations we have 
held since 1970,
the human population and economy have become any more 
respectful of the
Earth, the Earth hasn't noticed.
     The planet is not impressed by fancy speeches.  
Leonardo DiCaprio
interviewing Bill Clinton about global warming is not 
an Earth-shaking
event.  The Earth has no way of registering good 
intentions or future
inventions or high hopes.  It doesn't even pay 
attention to dollars, which
are, from a planet's point of view, just a charming 
human invention.
Planets measure only physical things-energy and 
materials and their flows
into and out of the changing populations of living 
creatures.
     What the Earth sees is that on the first Earth 
Day in 1970 there
were 3.7 billion of those hyperactive critters called 
humans, and now there
are over 6 billion.
     Back in 1970 those humans drew from the Earth's 
crust 46 million
barrels of oil every day-now they draw 78 million.
     Natural gas extraction has nearly tripled in 
thirty years, from 34
trillion cubic feet per year to 95 trillion.  We mined

2.2 billion metric
tons in 1970; this year we'll mine about 3.8 billion.
     The planet feels this fossil fuel use in many 
ways, as the fuels are
extracted (and spilled) and shipped (and spilled) and 
refined (generating
toxics) and burned into numerous pollutants, including

carbon dioxide, which
traps outgoing energy and warms things up.  Despite 
global conferences and
brave promises, what the Earth notices is that human 
carbon emissions have
increased from 3.9 million metric tons in 1970 to an 
estimated 6.4 million
this year.
     You would think that an unimaginably huge thing 
like a planet would
not notice the one degree (Fahrenheit) warming it has 
experienced since
1970.  But on the scale of a whole planet, one degree 
is a big deal,
especially since it is not spread evenly.  The poles 
have warmed more than
the equator, the winters more than the summers, the 
nights more than the
days.  That means that temperature DIFFERENCES from 
one place to another
have been changing much more than the average 
temperature has changed.
Temperature differences are what make winds blow, 
rains rain, ocean currents
flow.
     All creatures, including humans, are exquisitely 
attuned to the
weather.  All creatures, including us, are noticing 
weather weirdness and
trying to adjust, by moving, by fruiting earlier or 
migrating later, by
building up whatever protections are possible against 
flood and drought.
The Earth is reacting to weather changes too, 
shrinking glaciers, splitting
off nation-sized chunks of Antarctic ice sheet, 
enhancing the cycles we call
El Nino and La Nina.
     "Earth Day, Shmearth Day," the planet must be 
thinking as its fever
mounts.
     "Are you folks ever going to take me seriously?"
     Since the first Earth Day our global vehicle 
population has swelled
from 246 to 730 million.  Air traffic has gone up by a

factor of six.  The
rate at which we grind up trees to make paper has 
doubled (to 200 million
metric tons per year).  We coax from the soil, with 
the help of strange
chemicals, 2.25 times as much wheat, 2.5 times as much

corn, 2.2 times as
much rice, almost twice as much sugar, almost four 
times as many soybeans as
we did thirty years ago.  We pull from the oceans 
almost twice as much fish.

     With the fish we can see clearly how the planet 
behaves, when we
push it too far.  It does not feel sorry for us; it 
just follows its own
rules.  Fish become harder and harder to find.  If 
they are caught before
they're old enough to reproduce, if their nursery 
habitat is destroyed, if
we scoop up not only the cod, but the capelin upon 
which the cod feeds, the
fish may never come back.  The Earth does not care 
that we didn't mean it,
that we promise not to do it again, that we make nice 
gestures every Earth
Day.
     We have among us die-hard optimists who will 
berate me for not
reporting the good news since the last Earth Day.  
There is plenty of it,
but it is mostly measured in human terms, not Earth 
terms.  Average human
life expectancy has risen since 1970 from 58 to 66 
years.  Gross world
product has more than doubled, from 16 to 39 trillion 
dollars.  Recycling
has increased, but so has trash generation, so the 
Earth receives more
garbage than ever before.  Wind and solar power 
generation have soared, but
so have coal-fired, gas-fired and nuclear generation.
     In human terms there has been breathtaking 
progress.  In 1970 there
weren't any cell phones or video players.  There was 
no Internet; there were
no dot-coms.  Nor was anyone infected with AIDS, of 
course, nor did we have
to worry about genetic engineering.  Global spending 
on advertising was only
one-third of what it is now (in inflation-corrected 
dollars).  Third-World
debt was one-eighth of what it is now.
     Whether you call any of that progress, it is all 
beneath the notice
of the Earth.  What the Earth sees is that its species

are vanishing at a
rate it hasn't seen in 65 million years.  That 40 
percent of its
agricultural soils have been degraded.  That half its 
forests have
disappeared and half its wetlands have been filled or 
drained, and that,
despite Earth Day, all these trends are accelerating.
     Earth Day is beginning to remind me of Mother's 
Day, a commercial
occasion upon which you buy flowers for the person 
who, every other day of
the year, cleans up after you.  Guilt-assuaging.  
Trivializing.  Actually
dangerous.  All mothers have their breaking points.  
Mother Earth does not
soften hers with patience or forgiveness or 
sentimentality.

######################################################
"Technology is of no use to us if it is used without 
respect for the Earth
and its processes."
-Aldo Leopold

#######################################################

=====
Bob Parcelles, Jr
Pinellas Park, FL
RJP Associates <rjpassociates at yahoo.com>
rjparcelles at yahoo.com
http://rainforest.care2.com/welcome?w=976131876
"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life."- Confucius

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