Having thrown an apple core into some pondside flora instead of the trash can, I felt good for completing my Earth Day celebration early this year. But even as I saw an interested buck poking his head through the brush at the periphery of my country estate, I couldn’t help but feeling like I could do more. Naturally, I left the buzzing cicadas and Sand Hill cranes and got on the Internet.
As the people of Earth ostensibly prepare to celebrate and honor our home planet (it is not yet the 22nd at the time of writing), a lot of them are really angry. It seems we can all agree that we are generally not “anti-Earth,” which is a great start. That’s essentially where humanity’s agreement on how to manage the planet ends.
I try to give real controversy a wide berth, at least in the context of writing a blog for Foods For Living. But reflecting on Earth Day, with the help of the Internet, I was struck by something: a day of commitment to stewardship of the planet is the centerpiece in a very loud argument our culture is having with itself. What’s more, the zebra mussels of misinformation and propaganda are clogging the flow of information to a disconcerting degree.
In fact, calling the environmental conversation a “conversation” at all is significantly underselling its ferocity. While “war” is too strong a word, I could forgive someone for using it. Just look at pictures from the field: titanic machines, detonated mountainsides, protesters behind police barricades, chemical deployments, and a ceaseless propaganda machine on all sides. In the middle of this maelstrom is the “average person,” earnestly recycling, planting an Earth Day tree, and wondering how the greenhouse effect became a red and blue issue.
A Very Brief History of Humanity’s Relationship to the Planet:
For (far more than) 99% of human history, the Earth was our absolute and implacable master. Its capriciousness buried cities, dictated where we may live, and concealed the vast majority of its wonders completely. Then, in the late 1700s, the scale shifted so violently that it escaped humanity’s conception.
By Earth Day 2014, roughly half the people of Earth favored treating the planet like a giant eggshell, and the other half seemed to think the old girl was built like a tank. Still another half was barely eking out a living from the land, and accordingly cared little for this sort of First World dialogue. A final half seemed intent on wrecking the thing, as if that might prove something about its workmanship. (I know that’s four halves. If fuzzy math isn’t your thing, you may want to pick a different topic, because foggy figuring is prominent when talking about the Earth.) In the interest of keeping it light while nodding to this all this chatter, I selected some compost nuggets regarding Earth, humans, and the combination, to share.
THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH
THE MYTH: There is a giant (“Texas-sized” or double that, depending on your source) island of accumulated trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This popular myth has been “well-documented.”
FACT: There is a gigantic amount of accumulated trash in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, albeit trash that has not formed any sort of solid mass.
Obviously, dumping trash into the ocean is a terrible idea. Also, it’s easy to imagine a Texas-sized area of waste. (I would make a Texas joke here—such as “see: Texas”—but part of my family is from Texas.) Unfortunately, most of the trash in the Pacific gyre has been pulverized into small bits, where it is introduced into the food chain via plankton. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or GPGP, (or “jeepy jeepy”), is less on the unsightly end of environmental disaster and more on the long-term-poisoning-of-the-planet-end. “But not a literal island!” cry those who would call me alarmist. No, not a literal island. If you can get past his smirking, self-congratulatory delivery, this video by (convicted fraudster) Brian Dunning explains the issue succinctly. (A video purporting an actual island has triple the views on YouTube.)
Don’t worry. According to a 2008 article by The Journal of Science, at least 4% is the ocean is still pristine. Because Antarctica is too cold and too far away to be a good dump.
EVERYONE COMPLAINS ABOUT THE WEATHER, BUT ONLY THE ULTRA-RICH ARE DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT:
This is somewhat old news, but it has missed a lot of my friends’ (Doppler) radar, so I’m mentioning it here: Bill Gates owns a patent for a hurricane-stopping device. As you can imagine, this is incredibly complex, and probably won’t work, and would require billions of dollars. As much as I love and respect Gates’s work as a philanthropist, one should note that Gates has not proposed funding this venture himself, as many reported. Although the idea of a mad super-genius creating a fleet of weather-controlling ships is awesome. Here’s a comprehensive article from Scientific American. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-tropical-cyclones-be-stopped/
LET A GUY WHO MAKES ELECTRIC CARS TELL YOU THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT ELECTRIC CARS
I’m a natural skeptic about information from manufacturers, but Richard Canny, CEO of electric car company THINK, makes some salient points in his defense of the (much more efficient) electric car. Try not to think of how fast your cell phone battery depletes as you’re reading about his Electric Vehicle utopia. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/think-goes-myth-busting-for-earth-day--top-10-myths-about-electric-vehiclesbusted-91716524.html
THERE ARE MANY POINTLESS EDITORIALS LIKE IT, BUT THIS ONE IS MINE
This is a link to an article that isn’t special, or interesting. But it is an exceedingly common specimen around Earth Day. I’m showcasing this article as an object lesson in disingenuous persuasive writing about the environment.
This “editorial,” by computer science professor Dr. Barry Fagin, is the one example from which you may infer the many like it. It is one variety of the Earth Day Column From An Expert. The column is a meandering indictment of a few soft, unrelated targets. It contains only the vague entreaty, “Let’s abandon Earth Day myths.” The specific myths this doctor in computer science cites are few. He cautions us against mythologizing Native Peoples as perfect stewards of the land. He pokes some fun at an inaugural Earth Day advertisement by pointing out that an actor in said commercial is actually Italian-American, not Native American. (I bet he hated Scarface.) He cites a fabricated speech, quoted by Al Gore, and falsely attributed to Chief Seattle as an example of… I’m not sure what.
Oh, and he concedes that “humankind definitely impacts the planet, but the scope and nature of the policies pushed by the save-the-planet crowd are way out of proportion to what we know and what is likely to happen.” This is both the central issue of Earth Day and glibly dismissed without anything as inconvenient as “examples,” “evidence,” or specifics regarding what a sensible and moderate course of action might look like to the good doctor.
On a totally unrelated note, Dr. Fagin is a member of the Independence Institute, a Colorado-based Libertarian think tank. The think tank has donated at least $500,000 to another think tank, the Heartland Institute. You may recognize the Heartland Institute from their tireless media campaign against the recognition of global warming, or perhaps their collaboration with Philip Morris in the 1990s, wherein they helped distribute some Big Tobacco literature questioning the health risks of secondhand smoke.
To be clear: I’m not taking sides in this insane dialogue. But I didn’t get this article from some blogger who lives with his parents. The Gazette is a proud Pulitzer Prize winner, and Dr. Fagin is highly respected in his field. (A field which has nothing to do with the subject of his conspicuously anti-scientific article.) I’m just hoping to demonstrate that “following the money,” a technique I learned on HBO’s hit crime drama, The Wire, is very telling when considering the perspective of an expert. Not that any college freshman shouldn’t be able to see through the guile of such hucksters. Fagin does prove one thing: by needlessly making Earth Day an argument, then using some common logical fallacies (straw man, non sequitur), you can indeed fill a column with text.
SOMETHING SO REASONABLE IT DEFIES A SNARKY HEADING
Since I took a couple shots at Brian Dunning, professional skeptic, earlier, I'd like to help redeem him by linking my all-time favorite layman's summary regarding global warming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agfoRVfr6no
Phew. I don't know about you, but I'm feeling positively saturated with controversy. I'm also humbled by people like Bill Gates who may actually be able to control the weather (to some small extent) in our lifetime. But this Earth Day, I'm going to turn my back to the explosive conflict about how to care for our planet and celebrate ED2014 the best way I know how: I'm going to go outside. Maybe I'll even throw a second apple into the weeds.
SOMETHING SO REASONABLE IT DEFIES A SNARKY HEADING
Since I took a couple shots at Brian Dunning, professional skeptic, earlier, I'd like to help redeem him by linking my all-time favorite layman's summary regarding global warming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agfoRVfr6no
Phew. I don't know about you, but I'm feeling positively saturated with controversy. I'm also humbled by people like Bill Gates who may actually be able to control the weather (to some small extent) in our lifetime. But this Earth Day, I'm going to turn my back to the explosive conflict about how to care for our planet and celebrate ED2014 the best way I know how: I'm going to go outside. Maybe I'll even throw a second apple into the weeds.
