A few less flowery thoughts on Earth Day

Yesterday was Earth Day and the MSM was out in force singing the praises of Mother Earth. You know, I love the great outdoors and would like to do all I can to minimize the effects of our technology on the environment. I drive a Prius. I like to use public transportation when I can. We use those energy efficient curly light bulbs. I put a load of recycling out at the curb every week. This conservationism is part of being a good steward of God’s creation. Like a good Boy Scout I try to leave my “camp site” better than I found it. I try to avoid the sin of gluttony as I utilize our earth’s resources. However, I am not going to jump up and down over global warming because Hollywood and the Democratic Party (Is that redundant?) have made it their issue du jour. I do not subscribe to the religion of environmentalism.

Thanks to David Alexander I found this great post by Kathy Shaidle on earth day and the environmental movement.

The first Earth Day "teach-in" was celebrated on April 22, 1970, to protest the Vietnam War, pollution, and littering -- and to commemorate what would have been the 100th birthday of one of history's most notorious villains. [Lenin]

As the father of communism, the deaths of tens of millions of people can be laid at that Soviet dictator's doorstep. That now forgotten fact about Earth Day's origins should place your child's sudden enthusiasm for recycling, saving the panda bears and energy efficient light bulbs in a new, well, light.

Like the Marxist philosophy that inspired it, today's environmental movement has become, for its most ardent proponents, an ersatz religion. As Joseph Brean recently observed, "in its myths of the Fall and the Apocalypse, its saints and heretics, its iconography and tithing, its reliance on prophecy, even its schisms -- the green movement now exhibits the same psychology of compliance as religion."

I am very disappointed that Kathy will no longer be writing for Our Sunday Visitor. I can’t say I am too surprised she didn’t fit in with the editorial board at OSV. She writes with a biting style that doesn’t soft pedal her opinion. OSV has tended to the more mundane, let’s-try-not-to-offend-anyone style. The catechetical inserts each week are very good, but their coverage of news and issues has grown decidedly bland in the last couple of years. I was close to canceling my subscription after they ran an article praising a lay woman acting as a pastor and included a picture of her prancing about in an alb, blessing something with an aspergillum. As I have said many times, if you are going to subscribe to a single Catholic newspaper, make it the National Catholic Register.