If anyone is planning to do something "environmental" for earth day, that's good. One suggestion is to have that idea in mind, and to resolve to do it regularly, make it part of your life, like any daily habit. The world has procrastinated in doing the right things for the planet, and our western world, especially the U.S. has been highly responsible for the mess. Some people like to put the big corporates up on the pedestal because they "drive the economy". Well many will have helped drive it into the ground for current and future consumers. Costs of cleaning up emissions and for the mess we already have will no doubt be passed on to the consumer.
If a more long term vision of resource use had been developed decades ago to stretch out the use of it over much more time, the income would be steady, and less pollution accumulating at a high rate. However, as with much of society now, the attitude is "live now", "make profits now", "you only live once", "it's all about me". So the price for this living is to charge it forward, let future generations pay the price.
As a kid I would think about how oil and gas was finite, so if nobody tries to conserve it, then what will future generations do for energy? Well since then there are other alternatives for energy, though much still in development stages, but still, why should future generations be deprived of the choice of using oil and gas, just because our era's business want to drain every drop for profit now?
As a kid you might think, they'll want to spread the use of fossil fuels over many many generations and centuries so that other can get a chance to use this type of fuel. The topic of fossil fuels being finite is not talked about in terms of long term conservation. It's all for use now for oil company profits now. Too much reliance has been given to this type of energy. I have to wonder how much influence big oil/gas/coal has had on the development or perhaps more precisely, lack of development of alternate energies. We hear of so many reasons for increases in oil/gas, from threats to supplies, to wars, to more winter use, a CEO's broken toenail, blah, blah, blah. Hey, too bad we as a society don't move in unison like some flocks of birds, and take the oil companies in a new direction. If a large group of drivers were to commit to drive 50% less one day a week, or some variation of that, then we might see how the decreased demand will bring down gas prices, if at all, I wouldn't hold my breath.
