Happy Earth Day — today is Earth Day’s 40th anniversary.  Go to earthday.org to look up Earth Week events, if you haven’t already.

It will not be a really “Happy” Earth day as long as oil rigs remain in our oceans and we continue to burn coal and use fossil fuels.  See the photo below?  Not happy.  In fact, a disaster.

On Earth Day, Americans are reminded that they live on a planet that contains living things besides themselves that deserve protection.    It’s a shock to be reminded of this, for some.  Americans have gotten very divorced from nature, especially those that live in large cities.  What is our government doing for the Earth besides Obama’s recent announcements of new offshore drilling and continuing the use of coal?

Carol Browner, the director of the White House Office on energy and climate change, recently told Politico that if Congress doesn’t act to regulate greenhouse gases and curb carbon emissions, the White House will.  Browner said, “We’re not going to ignore a Supreme Court decision” that gives the EPA the authority to treat greenhouse gases as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.  “We take the Court’s decision very, very seriously,” said Browner.  In other words, if cap and trade fails in Congress, (and it probably will) then the EPA will go ahead and put caps on carbon dioxide itself.  Browner gave a long interview to Politico and a small excerpt is on the end of this post with a link to the whole thing.  It’s hard to tell if she is serious about climate change or not.   She spends a lot of  time concerned with protecting business.

Here is Earth Day information  from True Majority.

“Forty years ago today, 20 million Americans took to the streets as part of the first Earth Day and launched the modern environmental movement.   That day in 1970 helped drive Congress to pass major regulations that remain the backbone of U.S. environmental law — the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and more.

Four decades later, we need another groundswell of support to push lawmakers to address the biggest challenge now facing the Earth and humanity: climate change.  Congress is debating major [weak and bad] legislation right now. But the bill has stalled in the Senate and needs a big, public push if it’s going to help solve the climate crisis.

This bill is not going to be effective in stopping climate change, and might do more harm than good, so it does not deserve a push.   Senator Maria Cantwell’s bill would be somewhat better than what John Kerry is putting together.   In any case, I would not recommend fighting for a cap and trade bill that allows for the use of coal and offshore drilling, especially not after the explosion and disaster on an oil rig over the last two days.  Today the entire oil rig sank, and this proves to be yet another fossil fuel environmental disaster. Today cable TV news [...]