earth day

Earth Day 2010.

Depending on whose calculations or calendar you follow this years celebration of Earth Day commemorates millions of years of mountains to molehills, reptiles to rock, or thousands of years of creation to civilization, sinners to saints and demons to angels.

550 million years ago the Paleozoic Era began providing us with the Cambrian Period (invertebrate sea life), Ordovician Period (first known fishes), Carboniferous Period (early insects), and the Permian Period (early reptiles and mammals).

This was followed by the Mezoic Era about 195 million of years ago providing us with the Jurassic Period (early large dinosaurs), the Cretaceous Period (more dinosaurs, birds, creatures with pouches).

The Cenozoic Era about 60 million years ago giving way to the Pleistocene Period aka the Ice Age (various forms of early humans), and the Holocene Period (the last 3000 years known as history).

Two centuries ago we entered the Industrial Age Era (a time of great growth and prosperity for the world) and a time in which materials mattered more than matter from which the earth was formed. It became a time of great promise with the present more prominent and the future floundering to be saved by some future civilization.

A century ago the Persian Oil Age Era came to the fore (when the first wells were drilled in Persia and the boom for petroleum began) and the need for more using all and saving none became a mantra for the powerful, dominate and wealthy.

Twenty years ago we entered the Reaganomics Period (with the intention to increase on domestic spending while lowering taxes, providing lower marginal tax rates in conjunction with simplified tax codes and continued deregulation.) Providing this county with reduced government spending, reduced income and capital gains marginal tax rates, reduced government regulation of the economy, control of the money supply to reduce inflation. And more concern for the green back and less concern for the green earth.

Ten years ago we entered the Bush/Cheney Period (dismantling safeguards, ignoring climate concerns, marginalizing sound science and catering to industries that endangered Americans' health and natural heritage.) And a time for the bottom line of corporations to become behemoth and breaking the backs of the common man. It was a time when Bush/Cheney roll backed the “Roadless Rule” passed by President Clinton. This rollback would open up 58 million acres of national forest to logging, road building, and coal, oil and gas leasing. It was the time of the Dick Cheney National Energy Plan, calling for the expediting of drilling on public lands, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the western Arctic. And as a special bonus the President reneged on a campaign promise to reduce CO2 emissions from power plants.

A year and half ago we entered the Palin Period. (A time when the resonating ruminations of “Drill Baby Drill” roamed the seashore, prairies and mountainsides of the great Nation) It was joined in chorus by Glenn Beck calling Al Gore a liar, the Evangelical Christian community torn between the Earth God created and the Earth from which their mega-churches could make huge profits by still investing in pollution and the Neo Cons who insist we needed to nuke the Earth of its villains so we all can live happily ever after on radiation and acid rain.

The year 2012 may be known as the Tea Party Period (A potential age when no regulations, no rules, more of the “we and less of the they” exist). A time perhaps, predicted by the Mayan calendar, when in fact the Earth as we know of will no longer flow on its normal path. It will no longer; exhibit rules, less regulations, more CO2, less fresh air, richer rich and poorer poor, science gone superstition alive.

Happy Earth Day Earthlings, it took millions of years to get this far and perhaps just a second of time to wish it all away.