Earth Day Is For Suckers

It’s become an annual tradition for my friends and I to celebrate Earth Day in our own little way. Every year I pick up a big bag of garbage, walk off into some beautiful idyllic part of the woods, and proceed to litter the hell out of it. Occasionally I even decide to take some of my plastic milk or soda bottles and start a small fire, watching the smoke creep up into the atmosphere. At this point you must be asking “why would anyone do this? What kind of a monster would pollute like this, especially on Earth Day?” Simply put, because Earth Day, or at least the practices that it represents, is bunk.

Most of the things that you’ve heard about when it comes to helping the environment generally end up hurting it. Traditional recycling of paper and plastic actually uses up more energy and resources converting the used material into something useable then it does to simply build a new item. Ethanol subsidies make it economically viable for farmers to switch away from food stuffs which has helped to drive up food costs around the world, damaging people’s ability in poorer nations to meet their basic substance levels. Denying high nitrate fertilizers to those poorer nations also ends up creating economical damage as by far the number one reason for the destruction of the rainforest comes from people trying to expand farming. Allowing fertilizers and other high end technology would create greater efficiency for the land that the farmers already have. And those hybrid cars that you hear everyone talk about? Having to create a whole new car negates any potential windfall that might get out of this short lived car. If you really wanted to be conscious about your driving vehicle, then you should go out and buy a used car. All these activities do is consume more resources, something which, I’m told, environmentalists are against.

So what should we do to try and create a better environment? Well, I’m inclined to listen to Cato scholar Jerry Taylor and his advocacy of a more free market approach. When a person is under a profit motive to lower resource use so as to increase overall productivity and maximize profits then they have a fairly compelling motive for trying to reduce waste. If one company doesn’t reduce its costs, then another company surely will and the first company will lose market share due to its higher costs. People have a natural incentive to use less because it means more profit. Interfering with the market allows for people to game the system, costing the taxpayers money while not providing any sort of assistance to the environment; much like the massive subsides mentioned above for ethanol production.

So for those of you who actually care about the environment, and don’t want to just feel good about themselves, do the research and find out what these “green” activities actually mean. If you really want to help the Earth, then stop “helping” out through these unhelpful, and costly, practices. Or you could always join me on a pointless and destructive protest to spread awareness. Either way is fine by me.   

Bonus Tips on how to protest from the Daily Caller

-Phillip