Happy Earth Day!! How are you helping the planet?

Question

I volunteer and help clean up our local lagoons!

Answer 1

I do the "clear stream" program for a section of the Little Blue River I'm especially fond of.  Today I'll be doing a little caretaking of a small patch of God's good earth I currently call home.  Thank you for letting me use it God.

I live in a very historic part of my country.  It was a stop on the voyage by Lewis and Clark to explore the "Louisiana Purchase", and later when Clark became Missouri's first Governor, the first permanent settlement by the USA west of the Mississippi.  The landscape is littered with beer bottles, old plastic bags, condoms and used syringes.  Sometimes I just feel like picking some of it up and fill a few sacks on my own.  There are several nice little parks but they discontinued trash pickup quite a while ago, so I have to put the stuff in with my own trash.  Where are all those Super Patriots when you need them?  I remember showing a guy from Germany around my home town of St. Louis.  He was so impressed by the stately brick buildings, but his comment was "You have such good stuff, why is it that you don't take care of it?"  I confess I didn't have an answer for him, and I still don't have one today.

I can't help remembering the first Earth Day.  I was 23, 4 months out of the Army.  Viet Nam.  Another capitalist escapade disguised as patriotism.  We were making sure the promises Franklin Roosevelt made to Joseph Stalin at Yalta would not be kept, and we did a fine job.  Made the world safe for the heroin trade, we did.

My wife made a little button to wear to work that said "Take a Tree to Lunch".  First wife, but who's counting?  They made her take it off.  Too radical.  Might offend someone.  Had she been a guy, they'd have probably just beat the c**p out of him.  You had to be brave back then.  The young deniers would have loved it.  People like Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater were firmly in control.  No dissent permitted.  The land of the free, and don't question it or you go straight to jail.

Of course d**k and Barry would be called "Lefties" or "Communists" by the ones who post here today.  That leads to an interesting train of thought.  The denieristi like to call themselves "conservatives" but they aren't.  Goldwater and Reagan were conservatives.  Pat Robertson and Newt Gingrich are conservatives.  When you hear somebody attack someone both as a communist and as a religious person in the same sentence, the person talking is way, way to the right of the religious right, which is where the boundary marker used to be for the extreme Right, back on the first Earth Day.  Out beyond that point the company thins out.  Mainly the fellers we fought in Europe during WWII who hated the Commies AND the Church.

What these latter day Franco's might consider is every time the boundary marker for the Right gets moved a little farther to the Right, the boundary marker for the Left automatically moves a little farther the other way.  That's just how things work.  New things become possible that weren't intended.  The resurgence of Communism that's happening right now is worrisome to me, remembering the real deal back then.  We owe that to these Neo-whatever-they-are's.  Communism isn't all that attractive, it's just the only known antidote to Fascism.

I'm putting a link to the cover of Time Magazine back on that first Earth Day.  You won't see Earth Day mentioned.  What is mentioned is that it's Lenin's birthday.  Happy birthday, Vladimir!  Many happy returns.  I kind of think the people who started Earth day picked it as a little joke...sort of a time capsule for the people who hated them so much, with the message "Do you get it?"  The answer, I'm sad to say is, "Not yet".

Peace.

Answer 2

I recycled the paper, cans, and I walked to worked today! I feel like a better person for just saving the enviroment!

Answer 3

happy earth day to you too :-)

today i am mostly gardening, no sacrifice, its a glorious day here. and cutting down on my computer use as much as i can bear.

Answer 4

i walked to class, used a reuseable waterbottle full of tap water, ate locally grown foods : ) happy earth day

Answer 5

I recycle and try to reduce my water consumption.  Also I am helping the World Wildlife Fund by using a cool search toolbar that donates money to their cause.

Answer 6

I didn't even know today was earth day...

Answer 7

i drove my diesel truck 45 miles to the nuclear power plant where i work, threw my non biodegradable McDonald's wrappers out the window, and dumped some oil into a lake

just doing my part

Answer 8

I am being aware.

Answer 9

I didn't litter today!!!!!!!!

Answer 10

It's Earth Day?  That reminds me I need to cut down that tree in my backyard that family of endangered owls is calling home.

Answer 11

I picked up litter in my local church yard where I eat

Answer 12

Everyday is Earth Day to me. I keep several cotton shopping bags in my backseats so whenever I go grocery shopping I no longer need the plastic grocery bags provided by the stores. Have changed the most frequent used light bulbs to CFL in my house. ready to install heat blocking films to the south and east facing windows. Use space heater in rooms I am at instead of using the central heating system during the winter. Set the thermalstat at higher setting in Summer and lower setting in the winter. Cut my grass high to reduce water need for the lawn. Change to organic program for my lawn (no more chemicals). Recycle. Send unused household chemicals to community collection facility. Stop agressive driving behavior. Keep my car in good shape.

Answer 13

Our planet will get by just fine without your help.

it has been here just a bit longer you know.

Answer 14

keeping the air clean

Answer 15

keeping up with the new yard growth and trying to use less lights today