no more band-aids
I was interviewed yesterday by Reg Sherren for a piece that aired on CBC’s The National on Earth Day 2010. It didn’t turn out as bad as I feared, but he had me read the blog post he found, and the result sounded a bit stiff and scripted. Still, I think it worked out OK. The bit starring your humble and unqualified blogger starts about 2 minutes into the clip:
I was interviewed by Reg Sherren for the CBC National News. He called me about a blog post I wrote in 2008 on my dislike of Earth Day, and we talked about some of the issues (greenwashing, real sustainable change, how a one day event may be short circuiting real change, etc…)
Then he had me read the first part of the post. I hope that’s not the only segment of the interview they use – ranting blogger rants! Film at 11!
a wonderful way to celebrate earth day.
Now, please excuse me while I go warm up the Hummer and crank up the furnace…
I had to stop here to de-ice my bike. The ice was several mm thick all over the cables, gears, chain, pedals, tires, spokes, me, my shoes, my glasses, my helmet, handlebars, hands… I was down to 1 gear, and no brakes. But I made it home 🙂
There. I said it.
Earth day sucks. It’s harmful.
It provides a cop-out, marketing-based, feel good way for people and companies to feel good about half-assed lame excuses for making a real sustainable difference.
Every day should be earth day. This one-day-per-year stuff is garbage. This “oh! what did you do for earth day?” feel good crap doesn’t help. Frack off. Every fracking day is earth day. What did you do for EVERY OTHER DAY OF THE YEAR earth day?
Just like striving for “carbon neutrality” isn’t going far enough. We’ve got to start undoing a half century of crapping all over this planet, and these silly Hallmark™ sound bite gestures just don’t cut it.
Yeah, awareness is good. But, really, who needs to have their awareness raised? This is 2008. This is post-Inconvenient-Truth. This is not news to anyone who can or will do anything about it. Can we stop the silliness now, and just assume that saving the earth should be a mainstream, full-time activity and not some stupid annual event? The “Green” issue of Vogue. The “Green” episode of $stupidTVShow. The celebrities touting their guilt-salving charity work. Ridiculous.
As long as we have countries spending a trillion dollars on wars to secure cheap gas for SUVs, all the weak gestures in the world don’t amount to a hill of beans. As long as we have countries willing to strip mine entire provinces to extract petroleum to keep the economy booming, switching a few light bulbs isn’t going to make much of a difference.