Happy Earth Day!

Have you got a big celebration planned for this phony left wing holiday?

Turns out it is also Lenin's birthday! What a coincidence that this environmental observance is also the anniversary of the birth of the founder of communist tyranny!

Helping you to celebrate Earth Day in a more sensible fashion, I recommend you play Charlton Heston's great reading of Michael Crichton's chapter from Jurassic Park called "Destroying the World." (see right)

Those who can do. Those who can't teach!

As a further aid to celebrate Earth Day, a meteorologist and an environmental lawyer write this opinion piece for the Washington Times.

In it they point out how heavily politicized the "science" of climate change has become and go on to suggest that the great divide on the issue is split between scientists who actually practice in the field of environmental science and academic theoreticians who are beholden to a liberal/socialist academic tradition.

And this:

Save Capitalism
Investor's Business Daily Editorial
04/21/2009

The Environment: Wednesday's airwaves, print media, cable news shows and Webosphere will be filled with nonsense about the scourge of capitalism, corporations and humanity. All of it will ignore the real truth.

Buried beneath all the badgering and fear-mongering about lavish Western lifestyles is a reality that the stuck-on-green left won't talk about and the average American isn't aware of: The world, especially in developed nations, is a cleaner — and greener — place than it was when the environmental movement began.

Every year Steven Hayward, a scholar at the Pacific Research Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, compiles his Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. And every year, his findings contradict the alarmists' warnings that the world is on the edge of environmental cataclysm.

From evidence "that tropical rain forests may now be expanding faster than they are being cut down" to the improving health of U.S. ocean fisheries to better outdoor air quality in American cities with the worst air pollution, Hayward shows there's more to be optimistic about than there is to be troubled about.

The Environmental Protection Agency has also published its own Report on the environment. Last year's report, the most recent, indicates outdoor air quality has improved, there's been a net gain in wetland acreage, public-source drinking-water problems are uncommon and forest land is expanding after declining for a century.

Americans are actually generating no more trash per-capita than they were in 1990, our production of hazardous waste has fallen from 36 million tons in 1999 to 28 million tons in 2005, and lead levels in our blood have shown "a steady decline since the 1980s."

And then there's carbon dioxide. We are pumping out more than ever. But there's no evidence, only speculation, that this weak greenhouse gas is having any effect on the environment.

"Overall, the health of the U.S. population has continued to improve," the EPA says. "Mortality rates continue to decline, and life expectancy continues to increase."

We're not saying the Earth, or even any part of it, is environmentally pristine. It's not, it never has been and never will be. Yet there's actually more positive news to celebrate than there are problems.

Of the estimated 1 billion people who will observe Earth Day worldwide this year, few will know about the progress that has been made. Fewer still will know how it was made. The media, uninterested in looking at the real story, will simply credit the environmental movement for the improvements.

Suggestion for celebrating Earth Day: Go out and buy a watermelon. Green on the outside, RED on the inside!