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[Asherdan]

[wombat]

Ash hates those hippies, hates them to hell.

But it's OK, because he does all that good shit anyway. Earth Day seems silly to me, but if it's any part of what made it mainstream to properly dispose of used oil and such, I guess it's a good thing.

You know what I hate to hell? Those canvas shopping bags. I am sorry, I just do. I never throw away a plastic or paper shopping bag - it always gets reused and/or recycled. I refuse to feel guilty for not bringing my own damn bag to the store.

[Choop]

YES OMBA

as a dog owner, i need those plastic grocery bags very much thank you

what, am i supposed to re-use canvas bags for dogshit too? BZZT WRONG do not pass go do not collect a dollar get out my face afore i smack ya

[wombat]

They are not nearly as subject to my damn will and whims as they ought to be, the little hairballs.

[theinevitable]

Y'know, I see Earth Day as just another example of happy assholes taking the public forum to tell me how I should live their way and be happy to be a good little small footprint drone. Goddam if I need a day for the fug smuckers to rally around Mother Goddess Gaia Earth and ring up what a planet killer I am if I don't get right by Sweet Sol 3.

Well, I mean, the other 364 days or so are days for the assholes to tell you that it's their goddamn RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN to fuck up the earth as much as they want and then die before things get really bad.

I mean, maybe I'm biased. A lot of my friends are hardcore into the environmental movement, and are not smug at all. And most of my high school was of the opinion that, you know, what I said above. My argument has always been... well, conveniently, the metaphor I use is something y'all just brought up. You are free to own a dog, but when your dog shits in my yard, it becomes MY PROBLEM and not an issue of your rights. And fuck*ng up the planet the way we are now is a way bigger problem than dog shit on your shoes.

[KeithHernandez]

Yeah, I got some free canvas bags when I got those free groceries and that is cool and all, but I use the plastic grocery bags for my trash can, instead of paying money for the same shit.  If I use the canvas bags I get 10 cents off for each, though.  I should bring in all 7 that we have between us for 2 or 3 things, wonder if you still get the discount?

Earth Day is bad because it gives people a false sense of doing something positive when they didn't do anything at all.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Well, I mean, the other 364 days or so are days for the assholes to tell you that it's their goddamn RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN to fuck up the earth as much as they want and then die before things get really bad.

I, along with ash, find this unbelievable that there is a substantial non-high school age population that say things like this and mean it. And if they are saying it, they are not any where near as loud as the environmentalists trying to tell me how to live my life 365 days a year.

[theinevitable]

Yeah, ok, maybe a bad analogy due to private/public property distinctions. But when your (the general you, not You Asherdan) actions affect me, they stop being your Right. Your right to leave the faucet running ends where my kids start dying of thirst in 40 years.
I know it sounds bullshit and all, but the earth belongs to all of us, and when you pollute, you are fuck*ng up something that isn't yours to fuck up. Individual liberty ends when you're ruining something that isn't yours. RESPONSIBILITY.

I am inclined to think the college-from-highschool shift is also due to the fact that I went to high school with a bunch of entitled, conservative, rich white kids who got off on not giving a shit about anyone but themselves.
Now I go to college with a bunch of entitled, liberal, rich white kids who get off on pretending to give a shit about people other than themselves.

Which, I mean, I criticize, but at least the good impulse is there.


I don't mean that people literally say "I am going to ruin the earth and then die, it's my right." I mean that I have heard TONS of people argue that it's their right as an American to drive whatever car they want, waste as much water/electricity/whatever as they want, etc. Maybe only due to where I grew up, but I dont' think all those letters to the editor were written by high schoolers. They need to get the fuck over themselves and realize there are other people on the planet.

edit: changed an unnecessarily ambiguos pronoun which made it sound like I was yelling at y'all more than I meant to.

[Arachno-capitalist]

The right to swing a fist ends where your nose begins thing gets a lot of play around here. The analogy only goes so far. Drawing an end to the right to use my faucet because you think your hypothetical children will die of thirst in 40 years is just too much. Statements like that deduct credibility from otherwise legitimate arguments.

[theinevitable]

The right to swing a fist ends where your nose begins thing gets a lot of play around here. The analogy only goes so far. Drawing an end to the right to use my faucet because you think your hypothetical children will die of thirst in 40 years is just too much. Statements like that deduct credibility from otherwise legitimate arguments.

OK, not my hypothetical children. The children who will be alive in 40 years, then.

[theinevitable]

yeah, that is what a large group of my friends are really into. Environmental Engineering majors and such, they are intense.

The problem is, they do a presentation of "this is the minimum we can do and not completely kill off the human species in the next 2 generations-- we need to cut carbon emissions this much, which we can accomplish by doing X Y and Z, and we need to reduce water usage, here are some options for that." And people come away thinking that it's some crazy tree-hugging bend-no-blade-of-grass thing, when really it's a pretty pragmatic plan. On a more small-scale level, they are leading a campaign on campus called "Simple Steps" that encourages people to ride the metro instead of driving, take shorter showers, etc.

There is science being done, the problem is that people (in power and in general) don't take it seriously, at least a lot of them seem not to. Maybe it isn't getting out there enough.

On a side note, these friends of mine are vegetarians, but a month or so ago they agreed that they missed eating meat sometimes. So they drove out to the middle of Missouri somewhere to a free-range chicken farm, paid the farmer, and then cut the chicken's head off, plucked it, and cooked it. I enjoy that story a lot.

[theinevitable]

I mean, the problem is that we aren't on that long of a timescale for some of these things. We need to change things pretty drastically immediately. Not to the point of bend no blade of grass, but, pretty radical change.

[Arachno-capitalist]

Every generation has believed that their generation is in some absolutely pressing situation that only they can solve by acting radically and immediately.

[side_show]

I'm feeling like the odd one out, 'cause I love Earth Day and have since I was a kid.  I don't really take it as a day to tell other people what to do with their lives though, unless they invite suggestions and discussion.  I think of it more as a nice opportunity to examine my personal aesthetic of simplicity and self reliance, and think up new exciting ways to connect with the sense of inner peace I get from realizing I already have everything I need in life.  I take a lot of pleasure in reducing my consumption, dependence and need for extraneous stuff, so I like having a day where I can talk about it with like-minded folks, hear their creative ideas, offer my own, maybe implement some nice changes.  It's a positive, meditative day for me.  I walked to and from the theatre today, which is about 5 miles of walking, and it was awesome - listening to good music, enjoying the spring sun.  Weirding out random strangers by making eye contact and smiling like a dork.  I really, really dug on the pregnancy test I saw squashed by traffic in the middle of a very busy intersection I was crossing, musing on how it might have gotten there (this is the second pregnancy test I've seen in strange, unlikely places in as many years while walking to work.  Don't get me started on condoms, needles or other bodily fluids.  I live in the hood yo').  Maybe it's cause I'm aboriginal, but for me, my personal earth connection is really important, not in an outward way related to what others should do, but in a personal way, as in "how I can do more and more and more to put things right, to let go of my desire for things that I actually don't need... " etc.  In honour of this I wore my toad necklace (elder toad's the one who brought the earth to the back of the turtle, which Sky Woman uses to great the whole world in my favorite creation story..

The whole environmental movement can be really terrible though.  Nothing like the mind-fuck of how every store is marketing a reusable bag now.  Fuck that shit.  Isn't that the "problem" they're implying you have to fix?  That there are too many bags?  How do we solve the problem of too many bags?  More bags!  Who the fuck doesn't have a bag?  If a business really, actually, truly wants to reduce its waste creation, then they can give their customers fare warning and then stop providing them (maybe saving some shitty assed cardboard boxes that some stuff was shipped in in case you forget.)  There are stores locally that have done this, but all the ones who are jumping on the "we now sell a reusable bag!" band wagon now?  They're just marketing something new that looks like change, but isn't actually change.  But maybe a cashier will guilt you, and you'll buy one of their bags, and it'll alleviate your guilt.  And it's never enough.  Like no matter what you do, it'll never be enough.  The next big thing, if you buy it, you will solve all your problems.  But next is the next new big thing that will solve all your problems, maybe save the fuck*ng planet!  That's sort of a media/marketing thing, not true care for the earth, I think.  Fear/shame based shit does no good, but it sells shit.  The sort of action for the good that actually empowers people isn't exactly big business, or business at all in many cases.  Self sufficient behavior isn't good customer behavior, ya' see.

Anyway, it's a good day.  It can be a good day.  Just sift out the bull shit and know that an invitation and opportunity for self examination is always positive.  Assholes and their bullshit self serving come in 32 flavours:  you got your hippie flavour and CEO flavour, and on and on - t'ain't related to the day for me, or my journey.  Maybe take a few steps back from the hustle and see the opportunity?  I mean you can stare at an ugly ass mole on your face all day, or you can get over the ugly and on with the attractive.

(edited because I'm shitty at posting while talking on the phone)

[wombat]

Yeah, the worst thing about the mainstreaming of environmentalism is the idea that we can keep buying more and more stuff, it just needs to be green stuff, when the idea should be that we should buy less stuff.

And yet... now I want to search the internet for a place where I can buy a toad necklace.