Earth Day should be renamed Humans Day

Editor,

Each April 22 since 1970, the United States is swept up with the New Age holiday that is Earth Day.

What is perhaps not as well known is that April 22 is also Lenin’s — Vladimir Ilyich’s, not John Lennon’s — birthday. This is not a coincidence: The first Earth Day was held on the late tyrant’s 100th birthday, and there has always been a kind of Neo-Marxist flavor to the event. Instead of capitalism being evil only for its alleged mistreatment of workers, the environment is being systematically exploited as well. So, because trees cannot rise up in class anger, we humans must stand tall against encroaching profit-making.

Which is not to say that Earth Day has never had a positive effect on the United States; it indirectly has led to a multitude of necessary — and many not so necessary — regulations and, for at least one day, puts the welfare of the Earth on the forefront of the concerns of at least 5 percent of the population.

What really bothers me about Earth Day is the new status its participants are willing to afford all things natural. The environment is a new quasi-god with wisdom of its own, far beyond the possible comprehension of mere men. People who would condemn evangelical fervor of a religious nature love nothing more than to tell the general public that our reluctance to give up our prosperity and well-being so we can save obscure animals in far-off places is rooted in nothing more than malicious selfishness.

Or that those who oppose the Kyoto Treaty on the grounds that it forces too many concessions from industrialized economies and nothing from developing nations are nothing more than, in the words of one activist, “carbon criminals” — an immoral class of people putting their love of money before their home.

Militant environmentalists burn incomplete houses to protest the evil of “urban sprawl” and attack car lots where sport utility vehicles are sold in order to stop the driving of vehicles that they have determined use up too many resources.

The movement has slowly allowed itself to become divorced from the reality of mainstream society and has become a tired mouthpiece of the radical intelligentsia.

What’s to be done? For starters, stop the assault on business and creators of wealth, for it is the prosperous that can afford to take the steps needed to assure humanity’s continued survival. Don’t mindlessly promote planning such as the Kyoto Protocols because placing restrictions on innovation and technology is the surest way to smother it. And finally, change Earth Day to Humans Day, beause the welfare of the future generations of humans is why we should care for the environment.

Removing the focus of conservation from a “humans bad, Earth good” assumption to one of honest cooperation with all parties involved is the only way to truly save the environment.

Michael Carrasco

Political science student