Earth Day – part of cultural Marxism

Earth Day is here, yet again, and for the fifty-fifth time. As CNAV did two years ago, we will review the history of Earth Day and discuss what it really means. In fact, Earth Day represents yet another variant of critical theory, which today has become a core principle of Marxism.

When and how did Earth Day begin?

The first Earth Day took place on April 22, 1970. Most people alive today cannot appreciate the real pollution concerns that existed then. Factories belched smoke, and their owners spared barely a thought for that smoke as unpleasant at best, poisonous at worst. Other factories dumped toxic sludge into rivers. Some of us remember the Public Service Announcement campaigns of the period, including:

• The Native American paddling down a polluted river, then walking beside a highway. An uncaring car passenger throws litter literally at his feet, and he looks up, shedding a tear. Or how about:
• The boy hiking beside a river – and past industries dumping sludge and noxious brews into it.

Or how about Comedian Pat Paulsen’s spots? He made at least two:

• He’s in a junkyard, catching his foot on a discarded pipe, and eventually taking out a key chain and twirling it. “I could have sworn I parked my car around here someplace!” he says. Or:
• He’s standing in an intersection, talking about noise pollution. Then the noises start drowning him out, so he talks ever louder to talk over the noise. Suddenly the noise stops, and chirping birds replace it. “What was that?” he asks.

To this day, Earth Day has its own advocacy group, which keeps the official history of the event. That history mentions certain things ordinary people did without the slightest thought. Like using gasoline containing tetraethyllead, and driving cars that consumed a prodigious amount of fuel per mile.

About Ira Einhorn

One name this organization does not mention, is that of Ira Einhorn – the Unicorn Killer. That’s because he likely “conned” others into believing he was the founder of the movement. He even stood on a stage, proclaiming himself to be the founder, so that someone took his picture. But before the decade was out, he killed someone. A jury would, decades later, find him guilty of killing his girlfriend and trying to turn her into compost. Apparently a landlord broke into his apartment to clear the bad smell, and found the body. Ira Einhorn went to prison for that act in 2002, and died shortly before Earth Day 2019. Which goes to show that “murder will out.”

A made-for-TV movie chronicled Ira Einhorn, his “unicorn” moniker, and how he misrepresented himself as the chief organizer of the first Earth Day. At least the official keepers of the history say that, and CNAV has no good reason to believe they’re lying.

But Ira Einhorn’s case illustrates one other thing: how easy it is to con the legacy media with a message they want to hear. Time Magazine admits that Ira Einhorn fooled them and many others into believing he planned the Philadelphia Earth Day event. According to one witness:

He was not even a member of the committee of 33 men and women who did [organize the event]. The photo you ran was taken during a one-hour period when Einhorn literally occupied the podium, refusing to get off the stage and delaying Senator Edmund Muskie’s keynote speech. It was an unsuccessful attempt — at least at that time — to seize 15 minutes of fame. Now a notorious murder, flight, trial in absentia and foreign capture are giving Einhorn the national media attention he so desperately craved.

It also gave Earth Day bad publicity, which it probably didn’t deserve – on this account. The real significance of Earth Day is as a reflection of the environmental movement as a whole.

The Marxist origins of Earth Day

Cultural Marxism relies heavily on critical theory – the imperative to criticize “dominant,” therefore “oppressive,” peoples and activities. Recall the essences of critical theory, as they apply to race, sex, and the Alphabet Soup movement. Racist ≡ white, sexist ≡ male, homophobic ≡ heterosexual, and transphobic ≡ cis-gendered – or in general terms, oppressive ≡ normal. (The mathematical operator ≡ means “is identical to.”)

Earth Day comes with this essential message: Polluter ≡ captain of industry. And: Accessory to pollution ≡ end-user of industrial products. Any human activity (except maybe for speech) more sophisticated than the behavior and habits of a wild animal, is ipso facto a polluting activity, or one that enables pollution.

In a seminal speech last year to the European Parliament, Dr. James Lindsay set forth the principles of “Woke.”

He discussed “woke” in terms of equity, the new substitute for equality of opportunity. In this context he discussed classical economic Marxism (“Communism”), radical feminism, and critical race, “queer,” and post-colonial theories. But he left out what CNAV calls critical environmental theory, which is what Earth Day is all about. If all other critical theories require a religion of the socialization of humankind, then critical environmental theory requires the religion of worship of the Earth. The first time anyone referred to “Mother Nature,” anti-Marxists should have taken a clue. They didn’t, and that’s why we are at our present pass.

From redress of legitimate wrongs, to invention of wrongs

The best way to play grievance politics starts with identifying legitimate wrongs. All critical theory starts with such a wrong. Race-based slavery, abject (and unloving) subjugation of women, and simple bullying are the classic legitimate wrongs that excuse critical race theory, radical feminism, and Alphabet Soup primacy, respectively. And the headlong rush to industrialization, lacking consideration for the side effects of wasteful practices, excuses critical environmental theory.

The Bible tells us that carelessness about the environment is as old as the Exodus. Shortly after the Red Sea crossing, the Israelites came to a certain body of water. Very soon they called it Marah, which means bitter – because they had embittered the waters with their unhygienic camp practices. Moses – following Divine instructions – had his people place logs of “sweet wood” into the water – to depollute it. He then gave them strict guidelines on camp hygiene to avoid a repeat of that episode. (Exodus 15:22-27.)

Thus the Bible teaches environmental stewardship, which derives from the principle of not trashing your own house. (Ecology literally means study of the house.) But critical environmental theory invents outcomes that are not polluting. That’s because its real purpose is not to tell you to take care of your own house. It is to tell you to tear your house down – and not even to have one. In fact, the real goal of critical environmental theory is that you not exist.

The Green New Deal

Earth Day will no doubt highlight the manifestations of critical environmental theory – and its demands, and the Green New Deal. “Anthropogenic climate change” is the latest craze. It starts with bad assumptions and lately has reached an absurd conclusion – the indictment of an entire nation-state.

As Rea Hederman of the Buckeye Institute points out, the United States has led the way in genuine environmental stewardship. That demonstrably includes substituting natural gas for coal. Natural gas consists of simple molecules that yield carbon dioxide and water vapor when they burn. Contrary to propaganda, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. In fact it is the preferred oxidizing agent for plants, and enriching the atmosphere with it makes plants grow. (The oxygen that plants release comes from water. Plants reduce carbon dioxide to make sugar, starch, and cellulose.) More to the point, natural gas does not produce the particulates or noxious gases that often come from burning coal.

But that doesn’t satisfy the Green New Dealers. They insist that automakers build a class of vehicle that failed its Great American Road Test. Furthermore their unworkable policy prescriptions for farmers and ranchers clearly shows they want to abandon farming and animal husbandry. For that same reason they push “cultured beef” and a diet of engineered sheet mushrooms – and insects.

Four years ago, Michael Moore produced a film, Planet of the Humans, detailing the failures of many environmental “substitute technologies.” The problem is: Moor and producer Jeff Gibbs ended up saying humans should simply die.

Reject the Marxist anti-religion

All these attitudes bespeak a new pseudorelligion – or an anti-religion – whose object of worship is the Earth itself. Earth worship provides an excuse for a regime of engineered scarcity, central planning, and rationing. All this appeals to a twisted desire for control for control’s sake – the essence of Marxism. One could almost believe that Ira Einhorn did found Earth Day after all. The mania for control on the part of many environmentalists, parallels whatever mania ultimately drove Ira Einhorn to kill his girlfriend and try to turn her into compost. If he didn’t actually found Earth Day, then he found its inherent totalitarianism attractive.

Americans – and other freedom-loving peoples – should reject this idea. Sensible principles of stewardship are one thing – but a deliberate preference for scarcity as a means of control, is another. So start with Exodus 15:22-27, and the basic principle it articulates: don’t trash your own house. Bear in mind that this Earth is a gift that one should not abuse, but is not an object of worship. America was once on track to building a sensible environmental policy. We should use this occasion to get back onto that track.