So, if anything in the world exemplifies the complete cooption of the environmental movement by nicey-nice milquetoasts and corporate stooges, it has got to be Earth Day. Blargh! Earth Day is the stupidest thing ever! FUCK Earth Day with a big sharp stick, is what I say.

Some time in the early 90s (oh, those heady times -- how we laughed!) some genius decided to revive the weird 70s single-event festival of Earth Day as this big annual event. I dunno what the deal was. At the time -- you may remember -- people were brimming over with renewed environmental consciousness, and were twisting the nipples of their elected representatives to get stuff like regular curbside recycling pickup and dolphin-safe tuna and bike lanes and all kinds of stuff like that. People were ANGRY and the world SUCKED and so maybe there oughtta be a Earth Day, is what somebody figured.

But almost immediately, if not sooner, Earth Day became the focus of all kinds of corporate greenwashing and wimp-ass garden-club grandma environmentalism. It was horribly gross! Like, Earth Day celebrations are normally sponsored by horrendous polluters like Chevron or Dow-Corning, who then get a big tax write off for putting out powder-puff brochures about planting trees and re-using your coffee cups.

Then they have disgusting Chevron ads encouraging consumers -- CONSUMERS -- to be more conscious of Earth Day, while they continue to splooge huge gobs of HORROR-POISON in the air and water and eat away the faces of fish and birds with corrosive acid, and just generally make life miserable. Those guys must have BALLS of TITANIUM STEEL 18 feet in diameter, to get on your and my ass about Earth Day.

Possibly worse is that second-rate celebrities take the opportunity of Earth Day to show that they're Giving Back to the community by coming out to Earth Day celebrations in big Lincoln Town Car limousines and self-righteously haranguing the attendees to Live Simply and be better Earth Citizens. Then they go back to Hollywood and make movies about brave nuclear engineers and corporate ass-fuck executives, and all-in-all live horrible lives of disgusting excess themselves. Bastardos!

I guess the main upshot is that somehow the environmental movement has come to mean less about sticking it to the MAN and making him pay for his vile money-grubbing world-sodomizing ways, and more about having assholes like Tom Cruise give you a mean lecture about snipping the rings on your six-pack holder.

Fuck YOU, Tom Cruise! The world's not going to SHIT because I don't snip the rings on my six-pack holder! It's going to SHIT because your corporate overlords, who paid you 6 figures to come out here and shill for them, are CONSUMING the world like a slug eats a flower. That is why!

No WONDER environmentalism's been in a slump lately. NOBODY likes a lecture, expecially from stuck-up hypocritical corporate butt-boys.

Anyways, Earth Day is just sucky in pretty much every way. Maybe this Earth Day, instead of watching a Dow-Corning commercial on NBC about all the daisies and fishes their lucite Wilderness Shields (TM) protect, we should maybe reflect on some of the great eco-terrorist direct action that has happened over the last year, instead. FOR EXAMPLE:

• Seattle (N30) and Washington (A16). Big crazy environmentalists go to the STREETS and smash up STARBUCK'S in massive riots of epic proportions. And all to stop totally foul international capital from pissing their evil sludge piss over yet more and more undiscovered territory of the Earth. This is the biggest thing to happen for greeny people since the Endangered Species Act. No matter what your political stripe, you gotta dig those crazy turtle costumes, eh?
• Julia Butterfly descends from her loft high in a redwood tree, saves the grove, and writes a devastating book about her experience. Right on, Julia Butterfly! She's my very favorite hippy girl in the entire world. And now there's some other girl up in another redwood tree! Good for her. There should be more redwood-tree-sitting hippy girls, if you ask me.
• Jeez, did I mention the big RIOTS in Montreal, too? They were all about gross bio-engineered mutant foods creeping all over the world. Fuck that!

Because, like, BEAUJOLAIS for that stuff. There's your environmental democracy in action, right there, buckos. If this world is going to be saved and not turn into a horrible smoking cinder, it's going to be by turtles and Butterfly, not Chevron and Tom Cruise. I guess my main point is: less lectures, more riots. Woo-hoo!

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laredo@pigdog.org