Enough Already.

I  like Earth.

I happen to be a fan of our planet.  It's an amazing, life-supporting orb with lots of amazing stuff.  It's mostly very pretty.  Downright beautiful, sometimes.  So I'm all for celebrating it.  Earth Day!  Yahoo!  Remind people to recycle!  Teach the kids to respect the planet!

But you know what I also like?

People.

I love people.  There's some creepy folks out there, for sure, but for the most part, we're a pretty cool species.  So this kind of stuff chaps my hide:

This is floating around Facebook in "celebration" of our Earth Day.  Along with other cutesie little memes mocking how evil and disrespectful we as humans are, how we're destroying our planet, how we are too stupid to notice that our resources are vanishing at the speed of light and it's all our fault for being so greedy and mean.  And the fish and the animals and the insects are so very much more important than we are and we are killing them all and how dare we drive our cars and use disposable cutlery and slaughter our powerless little planet.

REALLY?

I'm not going to get into the whole debate about global warming or the ozone layers or any of that.  I do not have the stomach for it, as I look out at my fresh blanket of snow on April 23.  I believe we all have a responsibility to clean up after ourselves, and to take care of our home and our space.  My motto is pretty much "don't be a dickhead", and it's pretty much as simple as that.  I believe that many of the world's ills could be resolved if more of us followed that mantra.  I'm sure there are people that think I don't know what I'm talking about.  You're welcome to your opinion, as I am mine.  Go ahead and post a hateful cartoon on Facebook about it.

But I have to counter that irritating self-hatred I see out there, the "I feel guilty for being a human--why couldn't I have been born a Sumatran Orangutan?  They are so much kinder than we people are!"

Here's a little food for thought:

We have our flaws, but I like us.  I'm happy I'm human.  And that doesn't mean I don't like our planet or don't do my part to take care of it.