Happy Earth Day! Don’t Let It Die!

This beautiful morning one of my favorite birdsongs got me in the perfect mood for the fifty-sixth anniversary for Earth Day! The song I’m talking about is the Brown Thrasher’s showoffy song—the whistle/trill/toot/warble/chirp/etc--song that mimics every living bird you can think of all at once. And it was joined by Cardinals, Meadowlarks, Red-winged Blackbirds, House Finches, Robins, and a host of others.

And why not! Earth Day was one of the best achievements of our lame American culture during my long life-time. It was instigated by diverse young activists, officially founded by one of the dying breed of legislators, Democratic Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, exuberantly ushered in by 20 million Americans, and spawned the Environmental Protection Agency.

Earth Day is an endangered species of grand teachable-moment institutions in America. We are in great danger of yawning while it loses its pulse. The current decadent administration has already made the EPA an energy-at-the-expense-of-earth department.

It’s time to heed the Brown Thrasher, Wood Thrushes, Loons (three birds with my favorite repertoires of music). It’s time to bend our nation’s curve back upwards. It’s time to reverse the destruction of our environment, and the destruction of America’s better ideas and best impulses.

Happy Earth Day!  Please don’t let it die!