Earth Day 2006

I suppose you can’t have a gardening blog and not talk about Earth Day on Earth Day.

I am sort of an Earth acquaintance, instead of a friend. I am nice enough to the planet that it thinks I am a nice person, but I don’t go out of my way much for it. I recycle, I try to buy Earth friendly products, I am really big into the whole re-use concept, but I still consume more than I probably should. I drive my car everywhere, I don’t garden 100% organic, I garden maybe 85% organic and I don’t believe in global warming.

My husband is much worse than I am though. He will even occasionally go out of his way to things not Earth friendly. He proudly drives an SUV, he hates to recycle and for him, chemicals are always better. He figures the faster we put the Earth into failure, the faster we will move on into space. He’s big into space exploration.

We manage though and we probably do less damage than the average Cleveland household. Cleveland just is not what strikes me as an Earth friendly city. I mean it’s really hard to think clean and act clean when a drive into the city involves seeing massive steel mill smokestacks churning out huge amounts of filthy clouds. Not to mention the Cuyahoga river has caught fire (yes, the river itself caught fire) ten times in the past due to pollution.

It creates a feel of “Why should I bother?” I find that most governments are really big on their residents being clean and Earth friendly only if the resident does not pay a few million in taxes.

I was listening to Marketplace on the radio last night and they had an interesting commentary about Eco-snobs. People who seem to think of this as a competition rather than an obligation. It was interesting to hear. I have occasionally run into people like that. All I can think when I meet these people is “Sorry, I just was never a competitive person. You win, you are more eco-friendly than I could ever be.”

I did take the eco footprint test that they talked about on there. You answer some questions and then they tell you how many acres of resources you use. I did score less than the average American. I scored 15 and the average is 24, but I think that’s because I work from home and I am just too cheap to eat meat every night.

Anyway, happy Earth Day. Try not to screw the planet up too much today.