Damn, Earth Day snuck up on me this year. I always think it is later in the month, probably because I just kind of wish it would GO AWAY.
It is time for Hanna’s annual Earth Day Rant. Examining how silly I think our current environmental movement is. And my rant for this year is misplaced objectives that the focus on “saving the planet” creates.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so let me get this conversation started with a very precise 1,000 words:

Global warming did not do this. Buying “green” products will not fix this. And I highly doubt this child or her mother and father cares who Al Gore is.
Now that I have your attention, let me share a few statistics with you:
- 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease (not from chemical runoff – this is mainly feces borne diseases).
- 84% of water-related deaths are in children ages 0 – 14.
- Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.
- 884 million people, lack access to safe water supplies, approximately one in eight people.
- An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than the typical person living in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.
- Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes–one child every five seconds.
- Poor nutrition and calorie deficiencies cause nearly one in three people to die prematurely or have disabilities, according to the World Health Organization.
- In 2006, about 9.7 million children died before they reached their fifth birthday. Almost all of these deaths occurred in developing countries, 4/5 of them in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, the two regions that also suffer from the highest rates of hunger and malnutrition.
- Based on enrollment data, about 72 million children of primary school age in the developing world were not in school in 2005; 57 per cent of them were girls. And these are regarded as optimistic numbers.
- Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their own names.
What it would take to fix it
- We spend 450 billion dollars in one year on giving stuff at Christmas. It would only take 10 billion dollars to provide clean water to the world forever.
- Less than one percent of what the world spent every year on weapons is needed to put every child into school. (see the schooling source above)
- An estimated 104 billion dollars will be spent by consumers in 2008 on green products & services. Source: Forbes Oct 2008 – How many mouths do you think that would feed?
While we work so hard to “save the environment” (which doesn’t need saving, as I pointed out last year, it’s our own asses that need saving), people are dying. For god sakes people, stop shopping! Put down the credit cards, pull out a heart. This year, don’t buy a tree, don’t buy a fuel efficient car, don’t buy lattes in recycled cups. Buy a human life instead. Donate what you would have spent on saving the earth to saving its people.
And you know what, a funny thing happens. When we stop buying crap – when we stop shopping, we stop using resources, which reduces our “carbon” footprint and then we accomplish the point of Earth Day anyway. (not to mention when death rates go down (especially children), birth rates do too which helps to slow the overall world population.)
Here are the charities I donate or give to every month. Please consider adding one of them into your “green” budget.




In recent months, I have been making an effort to use reusable bags for my shopping. Believe it or not, despite the barrage of mass marketing that has indicated that I can single handedly save the planet merely by scoffing at the often asked philosophical question of “paper or plastic?”, I am not doing this to go green. I have 3 totally not environmentally related reasons:
It’s Earth Day again… The day on which I feel I am compelled by internet peer pressure to post something (thank god they are not pressuring me to drink, I do enough of that already). Which makes me unhappy. I don’t like that gardening and environmentalism are supposedly tied hand in hand.
Yesterday I had a lovely tour at the