Easter is extremely late this year, so this does not happen very often, but today Good Friday happens to coincide with Earth Day. Google has done up its logo to celebrate. Without peeking, can you guess for which one?
A little while later, I will be attending church services for Good Friday, the day the church commemorates Jesus Christ's passion and death. This is a very solemn service, with very little music and no revelry. This is a very important day in the Catholic calendar. Services (not a mass, Good Friday is the one day out of the year that mass is NOT celebrated in the Catholic Church) begin at 3PM because it is estimated that Jesus died at 3PM. However, the nice thing is that in 2 days, we can have as much revelry as we want on Easter Sunday. Jeff Newman, hang in there, only two more days until your carnivorous feast!
I will be attending no such services for Earth Day. Earth is something that needs to be cared for on a daily basis. That is common sense if you ask me. Pick up your trash. Renew, reuse, and recycle. I am as big a proponent of RESEARCH into alternative sources of energy as you will find (yet as of this moment, I don't see the practicality of what is currently available...save for maybe nuclear, but you don't put a fusion reactor in your car). Nevertheless, gasoline has once again crested the $4 a gallon mark. We need to take a hard look at the resources we have available...IN OUR OWN COUNTRY. Are we going to be held hostage by OPEC and environmentalists or are we going to make use of the natural resources we have available right now?
Liberals (AK) will argue that accidents like the Deepwater Horizon event from last year (the one year anniversary of which just passed) is evidence that oil is evil. Yet, oil is a source of energy. What is energy? Energy is nothing more than the capacity to do work. It's a non-tangible entity. Most of what society thinks they know about energy is probably wrong becase of this (I blame 4 years of being a science major in college). Right now, the ability for distilled products of fossil fuels to power automobiles is the best method we have for transportation. While research must continue into alternative sources, we have to do the best with what we have right now. We have the resources, we just need to tap them.
I completely agree with you, Nick. I like the comparison of these two celebrations and you're right, being environmentally conscious is something we need to do every day. I would assert that celebrating Christ is something to do every day too, but we're already on the same page about that! I have heard that reducing how much you drive and becoming vegetarian (the meat industry is apparently extremely harmful for many reasons) are the two biggest things you can for the environment but I'm no scientist.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that we need to dig here and now. I want an environmentally friendly solution too, but until then I think we need to tap our resources here. All I ever hear is that we'll harm animals if we do this. Really? We'll slaughter them and eat them but we won't try to relocate them? I realize there's a distinction here with the whole endangered species issue, but this argument still seems a bit off to me. Thoughts?
I hope you have a wonderful and happy Easter!
I don't think "oil is evil" any more than you think Jesus was the devil. What the Deepwater Horizon disaster (are you also referring to the series of earthquakes and subsequent nuclear reactor meltdown in Japan as mere "events," too?) is evidence of is that we can't safely retrieve fossil fuels at the bottom of the ocean. The risk in the cost/benefit analysis of doing so is just too high. It's also hypocritical for you to suggest that we should take care of the Earth every day, but then suggest that if it's two thousand miles away and ecosystems are getting destroyed by oil gushing into the ocean, it's cool. Pick a side. And I'm all for raping the Earth of its gooey fuel, but not at the expense of the rest of the environment - y'know, where we live. Also, independent of this subject, gas prices go up EVERY summer, largely because of price gouging and speculation. (Lattanzi thinks the Treasury prints more money during the Summer than it prints during the Winter, Spring, and Fall; he's wrong.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, I find it more than a little humorous that Good Friday rotates every year, but you are sticklers for making sure the funeral service is at the same time on whichever randomly-chosen Friday it happens to fall that year. You silly Christians!
Finally, y'know what we have a shitload of? Coal. Let's make cars that run on coal, if you wanna be entirely self-sufficient. Of course, they would counteract any "reduce, reuse, recycle" efforts, but hey, screw the environment, right?
@Erin- You're right, there are environmental issues inherent with drilling for oil, but like you said, we have the technology to do it environmentally friendly (directional drilling mostly). So why don't we?
ReplyDelete@AK- As I said to Erin, yes there are environmental issues that are a concern with drilling for oil, but we have technology that can minimize that. Catastrophes (better?) like Deepwater Horizon are the obvious exception. If you'll allow me to get religious on you for a minute (this was a post also about Good Friday), I believe that Genesis Chapter 2 states that God gave man dominion over all the land. It is our responsibility to use it responsibly, of course, but we have dominion over it. So we have the right to its natural fuel (even you said it yourself). The bottom line is that we have the capability of having it both ways (fuel and environment). Unfortunately, politics gets in the way of that too often. If we can find a way to power automobiles with coal, that would be another option. We've powered locomotives with coal since the 19th century...
As far as the date of Good Friday, we (the teachers) had a debate over this earlier this week. Established by the Council of Nicaea in the year (Josh?), the date of Easter is determined to be the Sunday after the first full moon of Spring. Every other date in the Lent/Easter calendar is based off of that.
First Nicaea was 325. Constantine's first foray into ecclesiastical matters, other than, y'know, not actively persecuting Christians. And using the lunar cycles to determine religious dates is straight outta paganism. :-P Just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteAnd like you alluded to, I don't deny we have the right to rape and pillage Mother Earth to our hearts' content. The POLITICS of it occurs, however, when what one industry does interferes with what another industry does. That's why, in a civilized society, we have government to resolve the dispute (although a lot of conservatives would just have it be whoever has the bigger gun gets the rights to whatever is in dispute).
ReplyDelete@AK Well played on the Nicaea year. And I feel like we had this discussion before on how the early Catholic Church borrowed a few ideas from other religions that have had staying power for 2000 years or so.
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