Today hereabouts 04.22.2024

 Today is the 2nd day of the 17th week, the 22nd day of the 4th month, the 113th day of 2024, and:

• Beagle Day
• April Showers Day
• Chemists Celebrate the Earth Day
• Earth Day - why today?  Because back in 1970, it was a weekday that fell right between spring break and final exams for most college students, and they wanted to maximize student participation.  
• Girl Scout Leader Day
• Global Selfie Earth Day [NASA]
• "In God We Trust" Day
• International Mother Earth Day
• National Baseball Day
• National Jelly Bean Day
• National Teach Children to Save Day
• Passover or Pesach -  - begins at sundown
• and after 46 Yrs 07 Mos 17 Days, Voyager I is 15,124,832,839 mi/24,341,066,511 km/162.70997974 AU from Earth

Quote of the day:

"Sooner or later, we will have to recognise that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution. What mankind must know is that human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans."

~  Evo Morales [AKA Juan Evo Morales Ayma] - a Bolivian politician, trade union organizer, and cocalero activist who became the 65th president of Bolivia

The EPA takes a lot of heat for government regulations these days, especially from the far right who resent any government "interference" in the processes of unfettered capitalism.  Those of us who read and remember the impact of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring when it came out, also remember days when there were smog alerts and rivers that actually caught fire.  Industry did not self regulate then, and in this day where investors' profits are the sole mainspring of the C-suite's planning, you can bet that it will not be cleaning up after themselves today either if they weren't forced to do so.  

Of course, it is painfully obvious we have a long way to go.  

Human beings generate an incredible amount of trash each day, and recycling doesn't seem to be working the way that we once thought it would.   And, not content with littering here on Earth, we have surrounded the planet with junk, as well leaving far more than footprints on the moon, and even littering the landscape on Mars without ever having been there. 

 Humans have altered the climate

Humans have added forever chemicals to the air and the water

Humans have caused the sixth major extinction event in planetary history.

Humans have the ability to completely decimate the Earth of all life.  

Every single day, there are more and more of us, more than 200K a day.  Even as we fight and tear at each other over the dwindling natural resources, even renewable ones, there is a lack of consensus on the need to take action, and even less agreement on who should take those actions and what it would look like. 

Morales had it right.  We may make the world uninhabitable for human kind and thus die out, but the Earth will indeed continue, even if we blow things up, leaving it covered in dust.