And That's The Way It Was

(CBS video.)

That's the way it was on the first Earth Day in 1970.

In 2011, we still haven't seen a huge shift in our national conscience. Giving nature its own rights still seems a bit far-fetched, but I personally like the idea:

Environmental philosophers and other people say that biological communities — ecosystems, habitats, species and populations — have a right to exist. They’re not just valuable because they’re someone’s property. Environmental lawyers say courts should recognize this right, and could allow people to represent nature as legal guardians or trustees.

Hey, if the U.S. courts insist that corporations are people, then why shouldn't an ocean or a river have rights too?

Separation of Oil and State

I'm sure Stephen Colbert wasn't the only one exercising his denial defense mechanisms after learning about the Earth Day oil spill:

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But now none of us can ignore this ecological catastrophe. It's time for us to grow up, see through the oil-industry propaganda, ignore the usual bunch of "drill baby, drill" shouters, and anticipate these inevitable disasters.

As Rachel Maddow pointed out on her show last night, a corporation's permission to drill should be tied to their ability to clean up their messes:

But even as drilling technology has advanced so we can do it in places that we couldn't do it before, it doesn't seem like we bothered to make sure we knew how to clean up in these places if we needed to. Am I being naive to think that the regulatory process, the approval process, should link those two things, that you shouldn't be approved to drill deeper than you know how to clean up?

Sierra Club's Michael Brune responded that, much like separation of church and state, we need to separate oil and state, and that the industry can't regulate itself, and there are "big problems that need to be resolved." Well, tell me something I don't know.

If we were really serious about the environment and energy independence, we'd be moving forward on more renewable energy projects like offshore wind farms rather than pursuing more offshore drilling. But I guess "blow baby, blow" doesn't make much of a bumper sticker.