On Earth Day Global Lies Zing Science.

Just because we could doesn't mean that we should.

As a celebration of  Earth Day, thousands of San Diegans crowded downtown, coming together, not so much to celebrate our good, once-green, earth, as to repudiate the anti-science stance of many of our current administration's henchmen and policies:

“The march is an incredible opportunity to celebrate the central role that science plays in our daily lives,” the center said in a release. “It's a family-friendly, nonpartisan event with the goal of raising awareness of the contributions of science to society and the importance of supportive public policy.”

For me, as well as millions of others, science represents the shining of a light into the deep dark recesses of the brain wherein lie superstition and ignorance, the result of flat-out lies adults taught to us as children. But science gave us a view of reality more consistent with our own observations as opposed to the dogmatic religious pronunciations and "call to Prayer" that worked about as well as letters to Santa Claus.

That shouldn't, however, keep us from noticing that there would be no need of an "Earth Day" to rally citizens of the world together to stop its destruction if it weren't for science. We know how Democracy led to an undeniable boon to the human psyche, personal freedom, and economic opportunity of those fortunate enough to live under its sway, but we also know it has not had such a sanguine effect on those who got in its way. The Indian Wars in America, for example, was comprised of nearly 250 years of bloody one-sided combat waged until the last of the hostile tribes were either rounded up, starved out, their food sources having been deliberately eradicated, or run to ground in shallow canyons wherein they were killed outright, women and children specifically targeted for extermination.

During most of the period, by slave-owning citizens of a freedom-loving country.

It was an historical feat that Hitler used as his own plans for  extermination took form in his head. His Final Solution was intended to be only the first phase of a vast, megalomaniacal project of privation and enslavement; of murder and colonization modeled on the historic colonization of North America by 19'th century imperialism, only modernized with scientific theories of eugenics and blitzkrieg invasions perpetrated with mechanized armamentaria.

But just as most of the gatherers on Earth Day were unaware of the direct connection between Democracy and The Final Solution, they were also unaware of an equally direct connection between the Industrial Revolution, based entirely on the new-found discoveries of science, and Climate Change, Global Warming, and the end of the world as we've known it.

So intent were they on their "goal of raising awareness of the contributions of science to society", that even on Earth Day, they remained steadfastly determined to never mention the contributions of science to Global Warming: No science (I know, impossible, even medieval stumblings in the dark were still science), no industrial revolution, which is the exact turning point in mankind's history when loading of the atmosphere with carbon began.  The acceleration really took place for good during and after WW2. But what was a spike then is merely run of the mill now. WW2 levels of unfettered carbon exhaust into the atmosphere is now a constant.

The one enabling factor? Science.

What keeps those engines of globalization chugging across vast oceans powered by burning the dirtiest bunker fuel imaginable, soon to be plying the open waters of a melted Arctic? Science. The never-ending panoply of chemical weapons of mass destruction built, deployed and dropped on an ongoing basis around the world? Science. Chemical waste dumps, slag heaps, toxic sludge, oceanic dead zones and acidification, melting polar ice-caps, smog, automobile deaths, overpopulation, jet lag and Caitlin Jenner? Science.

So whereas, “The march", may indeed be, "an incredible opportunity to celebrate the central role that science plays in our daily lives,” it should not be forgotten, being Earth Day and all,  that it should also be used to castigate the central role that science has played in destroying lives and the environment, and the central role it plays in enabling the very destruction that Earth Day was initiated to highlight. (It was, after all, born as a result of Rachel Carson's, "A Silent Spring", itself a howl of anguish raised by the unprecedented destruction of the environment by DDT, a deliberately deadly product of Science, manufactured with one object in mind: to kill).