Pooh on Earth Day, sort of. Where is People Day?

Maybe we have all watched too many Disney Movies.  Personification and ego have run amok.  We are now declaring ourselves protectors of this rock we live on, as though Grandmother Nature is on her death bed.

I am from Wisconsin, where they revere Earth Day founder and native son, the late Gaylord Nelson as folk royalty, like their 19th Century Progressive Party founder, Fighting Bob LaFollette.  But I cannot genuflect to the earth, our greatest killer.   Tsunamis, floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, wild fires, disease ——  nature kills more of us than we kill of each other.

This planet is 4.5 billion years old and can take care of itself.  It has shrugged off such giants as the dinosaurs.  It doesn't give a rat's rump for us.  Nature plays no favorites.  Survival of the fittest.

This is where it gets complicated, because I love our earth.  It's a wonderful, awe—inspiring place and we really don't respect it.  But I love people more.  They are my species. The earth is our shopping center, that about sums it.  Are we smart shoppers?

I am a natural conservative.  Conservative in the way that  nature is conservative. Respecting what works until something by chance works better.   I believe we humans arrived on earth by the grace of random genetic chance, like all God's creatures.  All the things that surrounded Cro Magnon about 10,000 years ago composed the environment that favors our existence.

Yet how much of that prehistoric environment is still here?  Not much, I imagine.  How long can we survive in this radically changed environment? 
Who knows?  It depends.  Everyday we roll the dice.

I'm not a gloom and doomer, just a realist.  Extinction, like death, is natural.  One day it will claim us.  But why hurry that day?

As Brad Bird's movie The Incredibles exemplified in allegory, when technology challenges nature for dominance, technology loses.  Nature has its own 5th Amendment: It cannot be used against itself.

This Earth Day, let's change our focus a bit.  Let's focus how we can take care of ourselves by preserving what is left of Cro Magnon's stomping ground.  WE, Humanity, must be the focus of Earth Day.  We cannot preserve nature simply for the sake of preserving nature.  We need jobs, we need food, we need homes, we need health care.  We need our life, liberty and property protections guaranteed in the US Constitution, Article 14.

I love this rock, but we humans are more important.  Let's keep that in mind as we pledge our troth to earth.  Everything is a trade off.  Meeting our surging needs changes the planet, making our species less tenable.  But humans must be our chief concern.  Let's figure out how we can have more sensible and satisfying lives here.

Let's change April 22 to Life On Earth Day.