The Rise and Fall of Earth Day, a Day No One Notices Anymore
April 22, 2014 in Economics
Patrick J. Michaels
Ah, April 22, when environmentalists celebrate Earth Day, and communists celebrate Lenin’s birthday, and no one really bothers to notice either any more.
What happened? The decline and fall of communism was a mathematical certainty, but what explains the profound disinterest that Americans have in the environmental movement? Just ask Gallup—where you will find environmental concerns pretty much at the bottom of what activates people’s neurons, and, within that diminishing category, the iconic specter of dreaded global warming ranks near the bottom of environmental concerns.
In the 1970s, Earth Day brought out millions of the eager, prompted dozens of quaint college “teach-ins,” and usually bagged the number one story on the three legacy TV networks. This year, bet that several of the major outlets won’t even notice, the exception being the tattered spinoffs of NBC, i.e. CNBC and MSNBC, which paint their peacocks green for a week.
“Where it was once both useful and noble, the environmental machine has now become a tool of common oppression, legally empowered to do things that no Congress would dream of.”
The decline of Earth Day is in part an unintended consequence of its success. The older among us remember the stinging ozone-laden smog of southern California and the opaque air of Pittsburgh. These, along with countless other environmental horrors, were pretty much everywhere, and everyone agreed we had tremendous problems. The EPA was started not by lefty democrats but by Richard Nixon. People were literally sick and very tired of the obvious pollution of so many of the nation’s urban airsheds.
This was back in the day when Californians were proud to say that they led the nation to its ultimate future (such an attitude today, unfortunately, predicts national bankruptcy and one-party rule). The Los Angeles Basin is one of the worst locations on earth to place a city thanks to the combination of stable air from the Pacific maritime layer, and trapped air, thanks to the surrounding steep mountains. But somehow California cleaned it up. Similar regulations governing automobile emissions spread across the country. City air became breathable.
State and federal bureaucracies charged with maintaining environmental quality grew like mushrooms in the compost of lousy air. Like unions, once their work was done, did they decline into irrelevancy? Hardly.
Which is why Earth Day isn’t so popular any more. As problems were solved, rather than qo quietly into the night, the …read more
Source: OP-EDS
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