Happy Earth Day

This is the trailer from the spectacular BBC documentary called Planet Earth, which I have watched and highly recommend. It shows the Earth in all it's splendor and it also takes on all the ways in which humans are destroying it.

The Huffington Post has a rather grim reading list posted this Earth day, basically a best of - of books that discuss how we are totally fucked and how there is no stopping what we have already put into motion (destroying the planet).  Starting out with Eaarth by Bill McKibbons , here's a highlight from the discription:

Even if we stopped emissions immediately, global warming would continue. He explains that because we're living in the midst of this crisis, it's important that we think about our survival. 

Then moving on to Alan Weisman's The World Without Us - I don't really need to comment on that one....Oh and then there is Rachel Carson's upbeat (that's sarcasm) Silent Spring which I tried to read and got three quarters of the way through and had to stop.  It was just too much.  Ms Carson is a hero and researched and wrote about the devastating Affects of fertilizers and other chemicals that we gingerly throw about with gay abandon with deadly results.  For good measure Jon Stewart and Dr Seuss are on the list, but even then they just look at a grim situation from a funny or illustrated point of view.

Still the earth is a pretty amazing place and well worth celebrating, for as long as we can....check out Grist.org and Danielle Nierenberg's piece 15 Ways to Celebrate Agricultural on Earth Day.

Happy Earth Day!