Today is Earth Day and, as is my habit, I intend to celebrate it, as I have every year, by spending the entire day on Earth.
Other than that, it’s business as usual. I’ll continue consuming our abundant natural resources at my normal rate. My Yukon gets 16 miles per gallon on a good day, less in city driving. (I drove in town today.) I took #5 son out to lunch: we went to Five Guys and ate cow.
Locally and globally, the planet is doing well. The places that are really miserable, ecologically speaking, are generally places where collectivists (socialists and their ilk) hold sway. We’re fortunate here in America to have well-defined property rights and an economic system that produces enough surplus to allow us to do inherently dirty things in a clean, if somewhat more expensive, way. That could change: the Green New Deal, for example, would put an end to both property rights and surpluses, and give us the crippled economy of a third world country and the ecological deterioration to match. (If it’s any consolation, the GND would at least replace the Affordable Care Act as the most ironically misnamed bit of nanny-state overreach.)
Enjoy the day. Go outside and appreciate this beautiful environment that the wealth of our free-market economy affords us.
And eat a steak.