Earthy Language
“Eighty percent of pollution is caused by grass and trees.”
- Ronald Reagan
Thirty-three years ago, on the first Earth Day, I was working for a small radio station in the South. One of the hats I was wearing was a reporter’s fedora and I was pretty wet-behind-the-ears. The news director was a crusty old curmudgeon named John G. Thomas. One of the reasons I remember him so well is because he went through about six cigars a day without ever lighting up. He ate them.
You’d think I’d have had better sense than to suggest doing a story about Earth Day, but I was unimaginably green at the time. Partially from being confronted with half-eaten cigars in every ashtray. John G. looked over his half-glasses and snarled “Earth Day? What the hell is that?”
I thought I understood the importance of being earnest, so I tried to explain the concept to him.
His reply: “I never heard such a load of bushwah in my life!”
Bushwah. I’m sure that was the word he used. He would probably be surprised at the amount of Bushwah that has come to rest in the White House. Earth Day didn’t get much coverage at WCKB (We’re Carolina’s King Bee) that first year. Despite that crippling handicap, the idea seems to have caught on.
Earth Day has raised a lot of consciousness over the years, but there seems to be a fairly substantial number of people who have nothing that can be raised. So what has changed? Even the most egregious corporate polluters and the politicians they own now pay at least lip service to the environmental cause.
There is an interesting phenomenon that takes place every time a Republican president takes office. Memberships and contributions to environmental organizations skyrocket nearly as fast as the stock market plummets. Ronald Reagan, who thought that splitting wood on his ranch made him an environmentalist, appointed a character named James Watt as his Interior Secretary.
Watt was owned lock, stock and chainsaw by oil, mining and timber interests. He set about undoing every environmental regulation in sight on the grounds that Jesus was about to return and we might as well use up all the resources before the Rapture. He was such a parody of the corporate greedhead that he was almost impossible to satirize. But he singlehandedly turned the environmental organizations into a major force in American politics.
By the time Watt came on the scene, I was a political reporter in Alaska. He made a stop in Juneau where he was royally welcomed by the oil-drunk Alaska legislature. Alaskan environmentalists, a beleaguered lot to be sure, organized a twenty-one-chainsaw salute in front of the Capitol. Watt was so dim that he waved and smiled at the protesters thinking they were on his side. You just can’t insult some people.
The current occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue may not give the green movement the kind of boost that Watt did, but he is surely trying. Very trying. The American people have always rallied around the president in times of trouble without paying very much attention to whether he deserves it.
Bushwah is cynically using that goodwill to give his corporate masters anything they ask for. His carefully scripted appearance last year on Earth Day focused on his plan to solve the problem of acid rain in the lakes and forests of the Northeast. The plan? Get the regulators and lawyers out of the way and let the polluters police themselves. This ranks right up there with allowing legislators to vote on their own pay raises. Sigh.
How often does it have to be said that those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it? The environmental organizations are already seeing the positive effects of a Republican administration. One wonders if they have been secretly supporting Bushwah in the knowledge that he will do everything in his power to increase their income and their numbers.
It didn’t take Mr. Earth In The Balance very long to jump on with both feet. Now that he is out of office, Al Gore is free to become a radical environmentalist once again. A side of him we rarely saw when he was vice-president. He was even bold enough to remind the president that the majority of the voters chose someone else.
Even for those of us who are committed to treating our home planet with respect, Earth Day serves as a valuable reminder of how far we have come in 33 years. And how far we still have to go.
12:28:31 AM 
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