Earth Day is a misnomer and negligible

    Every year there's a day that usually comes and goes without causing any significant change to the world's economy or pollution problem. And yet, somehow, people still buy into ludicrous proposals that claim turning off the lights for an hour, or picking up trash at some community park is going to make a difference, even though it makes no difference whatsoever in the grand scheme of things (i.e. the Earth).

   It's called Earth Day, and while it may all be nice and dandy in theory, in reality, this day and everything it stands for doesn't amount to jack squat. The same people who parade Earth Day around as though it were important are the same people who probably lined up around the corner to get their children inoculated with the barely tested swine flu vaccines as soon as their TV's told them to, before realizing after the fact that swine flu was just some bogus, media-induced hype.

   If only people could come to the same realization about Earth Day as quickly, and realize that this day is equally as pointless and entirely based on hype. You are not going to significantly alter the perpetual pollution of the environment by having big outdoor concerts, printing copious amounts of informational brochures, or paying for time slots on television to tell people what they should and shouldn't be doing (which never works, because people in general don't want to be told what to do by self-righteous hypocrites like Al Gore or Matt Damon, both of whom consume more energy than the average person and frequently use private jets.)

   Promising to use less paper is some dense idea to save the world, because there isn't a shortage of trees out there. And with electronic devices (such as the iPad and iPhone) subverting the need for paper documentation, this issue should correct itself in the near future, when notes and practically all forms of documentation can be electronically stored and readily accessed through the internet.

   The thing that strikes me most about the incessant idiocy of Earth Day in general is the concept that mankind from the Industrial Revolution up until the 1970s was just plain ignorant of its exploitation of "Mother Nature." Now that mankind has become self-aware of the environmental problems we have all collectively caused, we're supposed to work together in order to "save the fucking planet."

   Save the planet? The Earth is roughly 40,000 km in circumference with a mass of 5.9736×1024 kg. In the center of the Earth is a giant iron ore, surrounded by a bunch of liquid magma, encased by a crust of rock and water that makes up our surface, in which all living things that we know of live on.

   Earth Day is a misnomer, because mankind can't destroy the Earth, mankind can adversely affect life as we know it by altering the climate, but the Earth as a colossal body of matter is going to be floating through space long after we're all gone. If anything, they should call it Global Warming Environmental Awareness (GWEA) Day, but from where I'm sitting this is the best weather that New York has had in years, so if this is what the global warming looks like for the Northeast, then I say bring it on.

   If people want to reduce the impact of pollution, people need to go about it in constructive ways. Acting like a bunch of self-righteous hippies or smug, idealistic do-gooders isn't going to change the fact that everyday people need to drive to work. Fossil fuel is still the primary energy source that drives nearly all transport systems on the planet, and we live in a materialistic society that is a million times more destabilizing to the environment than all the combined grassroots campaigns in America can conceivably hope to counter.

   If people want to make a difference, they should begin working on a realistic means of transportation to supplant conventional cars that run on fossil fuels. Then, they should support building more nuclear power plants because 54 percent of our electricity (and the greater majority of our air pollution) comes from burning coal. France is one example of an industrialized nation that is run almost entirely on nuclear energy, and while they only have a population of around 65 million, we should be able to one-up them considering that we as Americans never miss a beat when it comes to berating France.

   Whether mankind undoes the damage isn't a matter of self-awareness, it's a matter of profit and politics. If people are really adamant about fighting global warming, they need to get involved in politics and understand economics (why it pays to pollute).

   The only reason why the most technologically advanced country in the world hasn't had access to the fully electric car until the year 2010 (with the introduction of the Nissan Leaf) is because powerful interest groups dealing in fossil fuels found that an electrical vehicle was not in their best interests.

   Figure this one out: in this modern day and age, how complicated can it really be for a battery to turn wheels? Not that complicated, considering that some of the first cars ever created were electric (Google: History of electric car).

   The fact of the matter is, and remains, that there are still trillions of dollars to be made out of the oil that's still in the ground, and the people who stand to profit the most from it will be damned if a bunch of neo-hippies at a Dave Matthews concert are going to stop them.

   Earth Day is negligible, because it doesn't address these issues. It only regurgitates the same pointless rhetoric that never amounts to any significant changes.

   I find it ironic that China, a nation that is on par with America's pollution output, will be the first superpower in the world to mass produce an electric vehicle for the general public when they don't even observe Earth Day.