How to REALLY celebrate Earth Day

As you know, today is April 22nd--in other words, Earth Day, the day of the year chosen in 1970 to be dedicated to the environmental movement. Needless to say, it is also a time when many public service announcements and pamphlets are made encouraging people to help the environment in their own way. However, a number of the arguments these announcements contain, while not bad per se, are not necessarily the very best things that a person can do for the environment. Here, then, are some suggestions of my own:

1. Don't just recycle, reduce and reuse too!
This is something a lot of lists of environmental suggestions seem to miss. Recycling does reduce the amount of an original material used, but if it takes energy to recycle something, that energy has to come from somewhere and that negates the environmental benefits. To be truly environmentally friendly, you should also reduce the amount of a given material that you use and reuse that material as much as you can before disposing of it, at which point you should see if recycling it is an option.
This isn't to say recycling is a bad idea--it isn't, especially regarding aluminum, in which case it is not only eco-friendly but profitable as well.

2. Fuel-efficient is good, but not great
I don't have a driver's license, so I'm pretty much limited to going places where I can walk or where I can ride on the bus. My mother, on the other hand, has a Toyota Prius, a hybrid-electric car. But, as efficient and clean as the Prius is, there are a lot of places near my home where I would much rather walk than ride, even taking into account the improved fuel efficiency of the Prius. Why? Partly because it should be remembered that, just like a light bulb doesn't pollute but a coal-fired power plant does, there are processes "behind the scenes" of all cars that still have negative environmental effects. A Prius may not pollute as much as an SUV, but for short distances walking is even better.

3. Don't be fooled by greenwashing
An unfortunate side effect of Earth Day is that many big companies use it as an excuse to advertise their products as begin "eco-friendly." Do not buy into this. This is known as "greenwashing" and it is a way of looking good without actually doing anything good. If you really want to make a difference, research the possible choices before you go shopping so you know what the most genuinely environmentally-friendly products available to you are.

Have a happy Earth Day--but remember to avoid the misconceptions!

Out of This World?

From the extinction of the dusky seaside sparrow, which can be directly traced to the construction of the Kennedy Space Center, to the poisonous rocket fuel contaminating the soil in Russia and Kazakhstan, space travel and environmentalism have never really been happy bedfellows. But one of the strangest debates that involves both of these areas involves something that is only just now being considered seriously: terraforming.
Terraforming, in essence, is the process of making a planet more Earth-like. This is not yet possible using purely existing technology, but could well be in the relatively near future. The most common scenario for terraforming involves placing large mirrors into orbit around Mars, using reflected sunlight to melt its polar ice caps, and introducing Earth life.
If this sounds familiar, it should. It is little more than an "up-to-eleven" version of what we are doing to the Earth right now. This, of course, begs the question: if we rightly condemn the act of polluting our own environment here on Earth, how would we justify what is essentially causing deliberate pollution on Mars?
One could argue, of course, that since there is nothing (that we know of) living on Mars there would be no ecosystem to protect. However, it should be remembered that the environmental movement here of Earth grew just as much out of a sense of place as it did out of a desire to preserve spies and biodiversity. Natural wonders such as the Grand Canyon and Niagara Falls are among the phenomena environmentalists have rallied around. Even if there is no life on other planets, would it really be right for humanity to recreate them in its own image?