Happy Earth Day!

It's Earth Day and TPP doesn't know whether to celebrate or cry. You see TPP remembers the first Earth Day because he was a senior, and it was spring, and he was going to graduate school, and he had a great girl friend who he had figured out he was going to marry one day. But all that hope and good fortune was tainted by the protests over the Vietnam War that led to Kent State and all the rest. All these things remained inextricably linked in memory. Environmentalism seems to be losing ground as corporate power over government increases, and while corporations might have a religious conscience that they are allowed to impose upon their employees as if their religious freedom meant nothing, few have any environmental ethic at all. It's a cool, but actually quite pretty spring day here in the upper midwest; a good day to enjoy all the flowering trees. Yet, here in Lincolnland GnOPe legislative bubbas from the far southern reaches of the state are proposing, successfully so far, hunting bobcats, a non-game species just now recovering its population due to long-standing protections. The bobcat boys legislators know nothing about how big the populations are ("I've seen lots of them every time I'm out in the woods.") or how much hunting the population can stand, or even what is know of bobcat biology ("They're blood thirsty killers of dogs and cats."). This is just plain stupid legislation based on ignorance and willful disregard for what bobcat biology is known. But then they don't care. Such is their regard for nature that their only thought upon seeing wildlife is shooting it. Locally another gun-owning lover of nature shot an eagle nesting above a nearby river. The news keeps reporting about the drought in California as if changing weather patterns (a prediction of global warming models) were not wide spread and having a global impact. Your water rights don't automatically provide you with precipitation, so farmers fight over the scraps and no one seeks real solutions.  Helpfully (not) religious conservatives bray that it is God's punishment for the wickedness of giving people equality and since the end times are so near (a former GnOPe congressperson said it) no need to protect nature at all.  How can we elect such pathetic non-leaders?  TPP finds it all too depressing at times especially on Earth Day. Now to spend the rest of the day doing something hopeful.