Is One Day A Year Enough To Save The Planet?

"We grow corn that hungry people need to eat, but turn it instead into biofuel to run our automobiles"
- Alan Ferguson, The Province, April 22, 2008

That pretty much sums up for me all that is wrong with the world.

Today as I waited for my daughter after Kindergarten, I watched another class out in the field with garbage cans and salad tongs as they picked up garbage, presumably in honour of Earth Day. This got me wondering if one day a year is really enough.

It becomes like Christmas. We all mean to practice good will to all men through out the year, but human nature rears it's cranky head and we forget, until next season. On Thanksgiving we count our blessings, and then promptly return to taking everything we cherish for granted.

These same kids who scoured the playground with such enthusiasm today will more than likely return to the old habit of tossing their garbage on the grass if a can is not handy. They're nice kids - they're just afflicted with human nature.

If we want to be cranky to one another or take each other for granted, that's one thing, but destroying the planet is a whole other problem.

Why not have Earth Day once per month? It could be, say, the first or last Monday, for example (a week day is better because it would require school participation). At the very worst, if it fails to create new habits, at least we'd clean up more often...