Some thoughts while sitting around the Earth Day tree.

Today is Earth Day. I don't know. It strikes me as being a little like Valentine's Day. One of those days where we are supposed to do something nice for someone that we should be doing nice things for all of the time, but we forget.

Anyone who stops here regularly knows how I feel about a myriad of subjects vis-a-vie the Earth. I hate excess packaging, gas-guzzling wasteful vehicles and anything that spews smoke into the air or dribbles seepage into the ground. It's pretty simple, really. It will even rile me to see someone throw a cigarette butt out the window of their car. I see that just about every day, so you know how often I get riled.

Earth Day was founded by John McConnell in 1969. It's a day set aside to remind us that the Earth is a fragile place and we're supposed to treat it as such. Good luck.

I stopped at the grocery store (another of my favorite places) yesterday. I needed two things. A salad for dinner and soap for my morning shower. Before I could wave a finger and mumble something, the clerk had placed the soap into a small plastic bag so that it wouldn't contaminate the salad, which was (naturally) encased in its own plastic container. The soap, meanwhile, was in a cardboard box wrapped in more plastic. So now, I have three bars of soap in three boxes wrapped in plastic inside a plastic bag protecting it from a salad in a plastic container - which probably was contaminating my garden greens more than any fumes from soap could possibly do. I understand that the store makes the clerks put the soap in a little bag. They need to stop that. Now I'm feeling like a fool because I bought Bath Soap and I take showers. I hope it still works.

I'm constantly amazed at the size and weight of vehicles traveling paved roadways. Vehicles that are made for life on the Serengeti are rattling down the road - you know that sound - the sound of the knobby tires on pavement. Usually, it says "Off-Road Package" on the thing, the door frame is three feet from the ground (so the Kangaroos can't get you) and there's enough armour on it to fend off a herd of rhinoceros. Trouble is, there isn't a Rhino within a hundred miles of Philadelphia (unless you count the Zoo) and the biggest thing it has to negotiate is a pothole that isn't big enough for the giant tires to find the bottom of. Generally, there is one person inside. They hold significantly more than one person, but I'm guessing that the people who buy them are doing it because they hope that the sight of them in a big truck will make other people wish to have sex with them, thus producing the offspring to make the vehicle necessary. It's an ecological circle jerk.

The Earth keeps spinning, no matter what we do to try to stop it. I think that's why we're so careless with it. That, and the fact that the people abusing it (us) will be long dead before any of our destructive habits take their toll. Our mortality makes us careless.

Now that a gallon of gasoline costs almost as much as a pack of cigarettes (how ironic is that?) I see that people are starting to conserve. Soon, those weird leers I get from people when I ride my bicycle to the store will be replaced by envious wonder and I'll be asked "Where did you get that?" We're funny that way. It's the same way that people get to be 300 pounds. A pound here or there (or five) doesn't seem to matter until we can't get through the doorway. Then, once it's too late, we decide that we have to stop drinking twelve Pepsi's a day and eating cheeseburgers for breakfast. By then, the gravitational pull on our heart and our developed sloth makes it doubly difficult to get back to normal size.

All of those giant vehicles that we were told have a utility (it's what the big U stands for) now make us think that maybe ... well, they make us think. I suspect that the same thing will happen to the Earth, albeit more slowly and generational.

We'll build so much junk and have so many resource-consuming children that we'll (a) run out of space and (b) run out of ways to feed us. That's a long way off, but anyone who has lived a while already knows a dozen places that used to be woods that are now shopping centers or housing developments. Take a picture of a wooded lot and pull it out five years from now and tell me if it's still a wooded lot. I'll bet you it isn't. It's a minor issue now, but we're starting to encroach on some National Park lands. How soon will it be before your trip to Acadia National Park includes a view of the new shopping center?

The big problem is that when you talk about such things you're called a "Tree-Hugger" or "Environmental Nut" and asked to step aside to let the backhoe through. It's a simple matter: There's a limited amount of space and an unlimited number of people. Something has to give, and I'm guessing that the limited amount of space is going to be the big loser. I won't be around to see it, but that doesn't stop me from imagining that it will happen.

Just like the fat guy, we need to do something about it before we can't fit out the door, because once it's too late, it's really too late.

I hope I don't sound like a douchebag.