A Simple Proposal to Expand Earth Day

A view of Neptune on a good day.

 Today is Earth Day.

It is the day we humans celebrate our efforts to combat climate change, stop air and water pollution, contain forest fires and secretly throw away our McDonald's wrappers under pine trees when nobody's looking.

Earth Day was invented in April of 1970 by Senator Gaylord Nelson to bring awareness to the fact that we had no clean air, no clean water and no Starbucks coffee shops. In the intervening years, we've passed the Clean Air Act the Clean Water Act and also built thousands of Starbucks coffee shops across our invigorated land.

Earth Day has been a tremendous success. We've expanded the range and seasons of forest fires, dumped millions of tons of plastics into the oceans and waterways, fought endless wars to devastate foreign lands, elevated the price of a cup of coffee up to $12 and just about brought closure to the thought we might someday damage the earth.

We haven't gone far enough with our noble efforts.

It's apparent with our great successes in preserving nature on our planet means that we can do the same on the other planets of our solar system. Our love of this sphere we live on, this great Mother Earth, is heart-warming. We're been so sensitive and thoughtful in our approaches to living in this lush green world, that it seems we've decided to expand our populations and philosophies throughout the universe through space travel, just because we love our home so much and wish to treat other worlds much as we've treated this one.

Perhaps it's too early to talk of saving the universe, but it's not too soon to express our determination to save the solar system we live in.

We should institute special days for each of our planets -- now. 

If we do not, it might already be too late to save them.

With proper planning we can preserve Mars, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus, Pluto, Mercury, Saturn and whatever the last one is. Oh, yeah, it's Neptune. We can save Neptune, too. Of course, Neptune is a terrible place to live with terrible service in the restaurants, so we might not want to have a Neptune Day. That might be going too far. Yuk, Neptune.

All the others we can save by giving each a day to preserve the wonderful environments of those planets.

Imagine Mars Day.

Think of how great Venus Day would be.

Would you rather be anywhere else but Pluto on Pluto Day?

This is serious business, giving each of our planets a day dedicated to preserving it. What's even better is that the length of the days on our planets varies. For example, if we made a Venus Day it would last 243 of our days. Imagine spending your vacation on Venus and think of the tan you could get. Mercury's days last about 58 of our days, so you might want to limit yourself to a long weekend on Mercury. Mars Day would last a banal 24 hours. If you don't like change in celebrating your environmental victories, Mars is for you. On Mars, you can sit on your couch for the exact number of hours that you sit on your couch on Earth.

If you are a skeptic about celebrating planetary days you might point out that the other worlds in our solar system are already barren and lifeless. This is defeatism in its lowest form. Since we aim for a barren world here on our Earth, why not celebrate the barren landscapes we find far away from home in outer space?

So that is my proposal, create a day for each of the planets before it's too late.

And, oh, you might ask why I hate Neptune so much and hesitate recommending a Neptune Day.

I once got rotten sushi there.

I was sick on that planet for a week.

Boo, Neptune.

😉

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