It’s Earth Day 2008 and everyone is talking green - despite the ridiculously hypocritical nature [pun] of it all. I’m not big on the greenies or their leftist propaganda… but I do like this big rock we’re living on. I like it because the chances of a rock just like this to support any complex life is about one in 1×10^10^120 (for those of you bad at math… that probability is unimaginably small). So, in the interest of keeping this big beautiful rock environmentally well - here is my list of actions you can take:
- Educate yourself on nuclear power. Learn to pronounce it (noo-clee-er, not like noo-kyoo-ler) and then learn all about it. The Nuclear Energy Institute has a great educational website filled with facts, truth, and mythbusters. Seed Magazine has a well-produced one-page cribsheet on nuclear energy. And my own website has a small Nuclear Engineering section with some good resources.
- Once educated, take action whenever you hear misinformation about nuclear energy recklessly interjected into popular debate. Dispel the myths, refute the lies, and lay a logical smackdown on the blathering freaks zombified from prolonged exposure to neo-utopian green-ness. Write your politicians about supporting nuclear energy. Write your politicians about equal environmental standards for so-called “developing” pollution mammoths (like China and India).
- Don’t believe the hype. Actively disregard anything being loudly shouted by student environmental activists. They’ll stand outside at protests screaming nonsensical eco-chants, yet they haven’t even done anything useful for the “Earth” yet to begin with… see what they’re like in 20 years trying to hold a job and raise a family. Usually these snot-nosed airbags are just echoing the sentiments of some socialist professor, and carry with it vehement disdain for the environmental policies of the United States. News flash, the US (and most western countries) are meccas of green gold - veritable bastions of crunchy tree-hugging hippies - compared to the rest of the planet. Ignoring environmentalist wackos usually can only benefit the Earth.
- Live reasonably. If you live in the West and you aren’t giving time and/or money to some worthy cause somewhere… then there’s a good chance you are selfish, and selfish people hyper-consume for their own ends. Break the habit by supporting a poor child. Consider setting aside a portion of what you’d normally spend on intra-family gifts to help out the local city mission. Contact your local church and find out if they know of anyone in need of some groceries or yard work. By spending your wealth (and if you’re in the US, you’re wealthy) partially on others, you’ll consume less and be a better steward of the environment.
- Don’t pollute. That includes YOU - fat lady driving in front of me throwing your McDonald’s bag out the car window onto the road! That also includes YOU - smoker who thinks the entire friggin’ planet is an ashtray for your cigarette butts! If I could magically cast two spells… the second one would be that every conscious act of polluting would take a week off the polluter’s life.
- Whatever Al Gore says… the opposite is probably true. Act accordingly.
Happy Earth Day!
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Good ideas, all. In working in a nuclear power plant yourself, could you just be trying to ensure yourself greater job security?
I’m barely old enough to wipe myself?
I tell ya, the leftist only endorse tree hugging environmentalism because it gives them a reason to have the government “fix” a problem by taking near communist control of peoples lives. Believe me, before long it will be against the law to sneeze without recycling whatever tissue paper you used. Well, I might be exaggerating a little bit.
On a related note, did anyone else notice that the tree on the KAPL “jar grippers” looked like a mushroom cloud? It was almost a cool gift, even if it does smell like tires. Much better than a cd/visor.
And to clarify for your student enviromental activists nuclear power plant does not equal mushroom cloud
@ John3Sobieski ::
Yeah, perhaps the wipe themselves thing was a little unfair. I need to hone that down to the subset of college kids I’m targeting. And yes, that’s a good observation about the motivation for the leftist endorsement of environmentalism… and excuse for governmental intervention… I hadn’t really even thought that far into it.
@ Heather :: Yeah, it didn’t take long before my office was talking about that, too. We lamented that - since jar openers are traditionally round - there wasn’t a suitably round or circular or spherically shaped object that would remind people of the Earth.
I called earth day “Happy hippie huga fricken tree DAY!” screw earth day, my mom made me ride my bike and strap me 2 a chair and rant on this thing called a “carbon foot print”.
what the hells a carbon foot print???
i was ok with the bike but she kept on sayin
my carbon foot print was big.
if any one knows, whats a carbon foot print?
Well, perhaps it’s not quite fair to paint everyone who’s still in school (or grad school) with the same brush - plenty of us know a thing or two about nuclear energy, and lament the proliferation of far left eco-luddite-politics dweebs around our campuses
Okay, okay… I get the idea.
I have since cleaned my language up a bit so as to not mis-characterize those schoo kids who are actually conscientious.
I liked the original version better. But maybe that is because I worked in a university for few years.