Earth Day Approacheth!

Earth Day Approacheth!

Earth Day, the day on which liberals, greenies, environmentalists, tree huggers, species lovers, and conservationists worldwide celebrate the glories of Mother Earth and Mother Nature and sneer at those of us who consider many of them fruitcakes, will be observed this Friday, April 22nd.

I hope it rains.

It’s not that I don’t recycle, conserve, do what I can, within reason, to preserve the environment. However, as with most things liberals do, Earth-Day-ists go overboard.

They protect the snail darter, an inconsequential 9 cm fish, by attempting to prevent the construction of a dam that would benefit tens of thousands, of people, not fish. They embed chunks of steel in trees which results in lumberjacks losing an eye or an arm. They advocate against killing baby seals and whales with no thought as to the thousands who earn their livelihood with seal fur and whale blubber. They cripple industry in the Gulf of Mexico by pushing for an end to deep-sea drilling. They cherish wetlands over habitable dry land. They prevent oil drilling and the construction of oil refineries to keep America dependent on foreign oil. They protest against global warming ignoring substantive evidence that it’s all a sham.

The list goes on and on of Earth-Day types demonstrating an empathic concern for nature and all things natural with little regard for people. The truth is that fish are still very plentiful, trees are a renewable resource, people can’t live in wetlands, we need oil to survive and thrive, and, though I think baby seals are cute, they’re animals and mommy and daddy seals will make more.

There is cause for conservation, but within reasonable limits and after acknowledgement that any and all conservation efforts should serve the planet’s foremost residents, not bugs, or worms, or fish, or trees, or seals, but Homo sapiens.

The good news is that Earth Day, after its heyday, is going the way of Arbor Day, Groundhog Day, and United Nations Day, occasions recognized mainly by the Nature Conservancy, the town of Punxatawny, and U.N. leeches. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4177)

Want to Live Longer? Move!

Want to Live Longer? Move!

There’s a killer on the loose, a killer responsible for some 20,000 deaths over thirty-five years, an uncontrollable, mindless, inhumane killer: Mother Nature.

Sure, there were worse killers during the period 1970-2004. According to a study on natural disasters, heart disease claimed 652,091 lives, cancer, 559,312, stroke (cerebrovascular diseases), 143,579, chronic lower respiratory diseases, 130,933, and accidents (unintentional injuries), 117,809.

That’s some toll and those are some pretty gory numbers but those merciless marauders are (somewhat) preventable and, when they strike, their victims are usually isolated and the damage they cause limited in scope. When Mom Nature really goes on a tear, the devastation is much more widespread and not confined to people.

We in the Northeast seem relatively safe, . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1649)

WANT TO LIVE LONGER? MOVE!

WANT TO LIVE LONGER? MOVE!

There’s a killer on the loose, a killer responsible for some 20,000 deaths over thirty-five years, an uncontrollable, mindless, inhumane killer: Mother Nature.

Sure, there were worse killers during the period 1970-2004. According to a study on natural disasters, heart disease claimed 652,091 lives, cancer, 559,312, stroke (cerebrovascular diseases), 143,579, chronic lower respiratory diseases, 130,933, and accidents (unintentional injuries), 117,809.

That’s some toll and those are some pretty gory numbers but those merciless marauders are (somewhat) preventable and, when they strike, their victims are usually isolated and the damage they cause limited in scope. When Mom Nature really goes on a tear, the devastation is much more widespread and not confined to people.

We in the Northeast seem relatively safe, compared to those living in the South or on the Gulf Coast, except when the freak blizzard dumps a few feet of the white stuff on us or when an errant hurricane decides to roar up the coast. We more than paid our dues with the unnamed 1938 storm that ripped a hole in Long Island and people in the far reaches of Maine tasted Atlantic seawater.

That doozey, dubbed the Long Island Express by some, caused hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars in damage. The casualty total was limited only by the sparse number of residents in the path of the Express.

You can run but you can’t hide when the forces of nature decide to remind us of who’s really in charge on our planet. With diseases, you can’t run far enough or fast enough to escape your genetic history but you can take precautions. With the threat of natural catastrophes, you can escape to “higher ground,” as the “death map” here shows:

(See the map and read the rest of this article at http://genelalor.com/.)