Or: Toward a Post-Earth-Day World

You know something’s up when Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson agree on something.

With Al and Pat all cozy on a couch, agreeing in a new TV ad (funded by the other Al’s wecansolveit.org) that we need to take better care of this planet, one can imagine a post-Earth Day world in which the day serves not as a plea to make change but a celebration of what was changed, a time in the future when the thinking that embodies Earth Day becomes part of the collective human consciousness, as accepted as the fact that the Earth is round and humans are the product of evolution. Ahem.

The post-Earth Day world is certainly a ways off. But we have to get there. If our grandchildren don’t celebrate its irrelevance, then they will be wallowing in our failures (or as Ted Turner suggested, they’ll be eating each other).

The challenge remains great. While green has become the new black, red is raining on the parade. A really brief history:

Earth Day, started in 1970, was a fringe event for decades. Even in 2005, it was struggling to find relevance. By last year, its popularity boosted by Al Gore and the IPCC pronouncements, Earth Day went mainstream, at least in terms of the public catching up with its calls for action. Corporations were furiously applying a green sheen to their images and online media rolled out new green web sites (to milk the advertising dollars) faster than you can say “do Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton really agree on something?”

Dueling Logos: Everyone is green today …

Yet all fads fade, and frankly a lot of people are tired of hearing about how they’re supposed to change their lives to save the planet at a time when their pocketbooks are being severely pinched and there’s even talk of food shortages in the United States (see yesterday’s blog and today’s NY Times story).

Green thinking risks being supplanted by the red ink of the economy (gas and oil prices hit new highs again today while housing sales and prices declined further) and also by another black: coal. Burning coal is about the worst thing we can do for the environment, because it burns very dirty. Yet with other energy sources getting hard to come by (today, we learn that nuclear power may not be the answer), coal is experiencing a resurgence, especially in China (which has sought help from California on emissions). As a species, we’re clinging to coal like neanderthals to their clubs, and if the global economy doesn’t improve, neither will the thinking.

So an Earth Day message to the future: Here’s hoping you grandkids can retire the day as one having fulfilled its purpose.

[An aside: Most reporters and editors will tell you they hate "birthday card" stories, the puff pieces written in advance to "fill a hole" in the newspaper or, for a web site, garner some traffic — on Mother's Day, Thanksgiving or Earth Day. However, try to find a news site today that hasn't jumped on the bandwagon in a significant way. I like USA Today's no-fanfare approach though, calling this coverage what it is on their catchall page titled "Marking Earth Day." Watch late today as web sites begin to drop green like a hot rock in favor of all the red (and, of course, the election).]