It's earth day....again!

It's Earth Day again! Is this a celebration or the fiftieth year of an overblown comedy/farce?

In writing my lengthy, well-researched manuscript, Managing sustainable development, a sabbatical effort that garnered a publication offer (yet only a $1200 flat fee one-time payment for a final manuscript) from Palgrave Macmillan, perhaps the key lesson learned that, contrary to the mainstream narrative, Mother Nature is not a friendly, comforting element. In fact, Mother Nature has long been more of threat to man than man has ever been to Mother Nature. Only when people curbed the excesses of mother nature did humans really prosper. From diseases and viruses to volcanoes, floods, earthquakes and forest fires, Mother Nature has long "had it out" for humankind, rather than being the benevolent resources for human life that is most often portrayed by 'experts' from Richard Attenborough to, well, name just about any progressive.

Start with a list of 18 predictions made on the first Earth Day in 1970 that have all proven spectacularly wrong. My favorite:

Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China, and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

The New Republic asks this week:

Remember When Earth Day Used to Be Cool? A person could be forgiven for being cynical about Earth Day in 2022. Even ExxonMobil celebrates the holiday. . . ExxonMobil doing Earth Day is a lot like arms and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin co-opting International Women’s Day—a holiday which began as a protest of capitalism and war. . .

Many contemporary defenders of the planet despise Earth Day. In fact, at this point the hatred is an annual ritual, observed with headlines like “I’m an Environmental Scientist and I Hate Earth Day,” “I’m an Environmental Journalist and I Hate Earth Day,” and “I’m an Environmentalist and I Hate Earth Day.”