To paraphrase Archie Bunker, “Earth Day is once again at our throats.”

Well, here’s a wishful thought for the 45^th Earth Day: Let’s take all the hyperventilated resources wasted since the early 1980s to fuel public panic over supposed man-made global warming and use that energy to power the planet into the next century.  What a wonderful world this would be (h/t Sam Cooke).

All the talk about saving the Earth should have been focused on action to lift a billion people out of poverty.  But, as the saying goes, talk is cheap.  And caring for the planet’s poor is expensive, and hard, especially in terms of getting the world’s ruling class to even budge on their arrogant leftist ideology that aids in the impoverishment of the masses.

Grandiose schemes designed to rescue Mother Earth never seem to include “her children.”  Whether from the 15^th United Nations Climate Change Conference in cold Copenhagen in 2009, or from unseasonably chilly Cancún in 2010, or Durban in 2011, Doha 2012, Warsaw 2013, Lima 2014, or this year’s late-autumn plush picnic in Paris, it’s easy from the opulence of endless climate-change summits to demand ecological salvation.  The hard part is saving anything except maybe selfie self-esteem and bureaucratic booty.

Anthony J. Sadar is author of In Global Warming We Trust: A Heretic’s Guide to Climate Science (Telescope Books).