History of Earth Day

 HISTORY OF EARTH DAY

April 22 is called Earth Day because it commemorates and celebrates the anniversary of our discovery of planet Earth. By all accounts, there is general agreement that Earth is far superior to the planet from which we came, as we shall recount below.

Meanwhile, several companies on Earth celebrate it as a holiday, or draw significant attention to it with feats of Interweb and mobile legerdemain.

Google and Earth Day

Google Earth Day Doodle

Google has gained ground going green, gathering gazillions of Google Workspace guests giddy with great gobs of gleefully garnered gigabytes of storage.

Just Google Google Doodles.

Apple and Earth Day

Apple Watch on Earth, showing Earth, on Earth Day

And Apple’s alliterative Activity App on the Apple Watch adds an Achievement Award! If you do 30 minutes or more of outdoor activity on Earth Day, you’ll get this nifty badge to amaze your friends and impress your relatives.

The activity can be a walk, run, cycle, wheelchair, swim, or digging in the garden, as long as you do it for at least 1/48th of the day. Teleportation, despite relocation over a considerable distance, is considered cheating.

Stewardship of Earth

Recently, however, there has been increased concern regarding our displacement of the original aboriginal inhabitants of Earth, as is often the case with more “advanced” conquerors, which is how we like to think of ourselves.

The indigenous population, a type of Eukaryota or, more specifically, Archaeplastida, is known in the vernacular as plants. You cannot have missed the increased media coverage on all things “green.” Of course, the Irish were the first to capitalize on this theme, but now everyone seems to have jumped on the bandwagon, with everything from green vehicles to green computing.

Extinction and Earth Day

Increased recognition of this previously under-represented population of our planet, sometimes persecuted almost to the point of extinction — when was the last time you saw a chocolate bush? — has brought more attention to rampant plantocide; for example, in Kansas, whole fields of corn continue to be slaughtered.

Plantophilia and Earth Day

Hence, this year, we pay particular attention to underprivileged plants with the motto:

“Take A Plant To Lunch…But Don’t Eat It.”

Instead, responsible humans might consider an alternative. One could instead choose to eat animals, which already have the good sense to be made of meat. And they are higher in protein, like chocolate, one of the other four food groups. Let’s put botanophobia behind us.

Respect on Earth Day

So, in celebration, let’s respect our plant brethren. They’re often at least as intelligent as many people you know; have you ever noticed how a sunflower tracks the sun’s movement? Think about it, Van Gogh did.

They’re also quiet and, while generally not good conversationalists, are better behaved than many human children.

Of course, this is except for fungi, the so-called “trailer trash” of the plant kingdom. They have been disowned for phylogenetic reasons, not to mention that they are “photosynthetically challenged.” Some of these heterotrophic mushrooms, through educational efforts, have found a niche in breweries and Italian cuisine.

Nevertheless, as you’ll recall, plants are one of the reasons we came to Earth. I remember when we first celebrated Earth Day in 1970, as if it were only more than half a century ago. Let’s not forget the other reasons:

• Location: it’s right here. Look just below your feet.

• Memorable: it’s shaped like the AT&T logo.

• Spherical: this makes it convenient for those ’round-the-world trips and has a much more pleasing shape than the one from which we came. Have you ever wondered why we used to call the previous generation “squares”? Coincidence?

• Great restaurants and great atmosphere, unlike, for example, the Moon, which has great restaurants but no atmosphere.

• Oxygen-Nitrogen atmosphere: this is so crucial for those of us who breathe, and is better than methane in so many ways.

• Gravity: which is set at a convenient “one-g,” quite handy for keeping everything in its place. It’s why we say someone is “down to Earth.”

• Neighbors: in this part of the galaxy, usually far enough away that they don’t bother us much, and those who do are generally more intelligent than average, needing to understand things like calculus, tachyons, and superluminal F.T.L. dynamics for hyperspatial physics.

I don’t know about you, but I plan to spend the rest of my life right here on Earth. I have other plans after that.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com