Well I will most likely piss off some folks before this is over but what the heck sometimes the truth is painful. Here we go.

I am flat out tired of the entire “Save the Planet” movement. First off the planet is not in danger. We are. Through nuclear holocaust, toxic waste or just blatant stupidity we could do great damage to ourselves, our ecosystems, and other life forms on the planet. However with that being said all those things could be damaged and/or wiped out by an asteroid slamming into the earth or some other “natural” disaster. Guess what continues to rotate around the sun making an incredible journey through space. Yep you guessed it the planet.

So lets make the argument about more than warm fuzzies and abstractions that make no sense and never keep much traction. Lets build a movement based on common sense and a pragmatic view of humanity. Lets follow, dare I say it, a more Christian idea of loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.

We need to look at alternative energy because it is the right thing to do. We still use the resources on this planet we just use them with more than a profit margin as our guide. Don’t get me wrong I understand the importance of a strong healthy economy. I am no Pollyanna who believes that we can all rise to the top. There are winners and there are losers. Some people are born with all the advantages of wealth and screw it up; others are born with nothing and make positive impacts to those around them every day. You do not have to be rich to be important. Hell you don’t even need to be rich to be happy.

We need to build green because it makes sense. A green building costs less to operate, is more efficient and study after study shows that green buildings promote happier more productive occupants. Schools promote learning better, students have fewer sick days, and people enjoy being there. For business a green building is a healthier place to work. Nice place to be promotes better productivity, better attendance and better moral. A green home is a healthier home, costs less in yearly upkeep and energy costs. Makes people more comfortable. And yes all these technologies and practices are good for the ecosystems in which we live. So if you get your jollies off warm fuzzies there you go.

Now to that love your neighbor idea. This is of course one of the primary tenants of the teachings of Christ. It is actually a command from Christ. Sadly Christianity has fallen a bit short on that idea. Now before you go grabbing pitchforks and torches hear me out. I love my faith in Christ. I love the things I have learned through the study of scripture. I do believe that organizations from most faiths do the world a great deal of good and show love for our brothers and sisters around the globe. However, we do tend to try to bend religion to fit our own worldview. Often time’s politicians and theologians will use religion as a weapon to justify very un-Christian like actions.

If we truly take the worldview that we are to love each other and want the best for each other we have a paradigm shift. We go from making policies that are designed for us to take from others to have for ourselves. We design policies that are about making sure those people we love, you know everyone, have the things they need first and then we trade on the excess.

Energy and agriculture are the two main things to discuss here. Now they are not the only things to discuss just the main ones for right now. When we look at energy production we look at ways we have unbalanced the production of energy. Rather than the US doing what it should do through responsible sustainable business practices explore and extract oil. Instead we have made ourselves dependent upon other nations and in doing so we have allowed and often times even helped corrupt governments to hold massive amounts of power over their citizenry. In doing so we have fanned the fires of terrorism against us. What happens if every nation is encouraged to become self-sufficient and not dependent on others? They become successful and are better able to trade on the open market their excess rather than trying to trade away what they need to survive to other nations while starving out their own population.

Same goes for agriculture. I have made the argument in the past that we have sacrificed way to often at the alter of economic efficiency. We grow more corn in the US than we need which in and of itself is not a bad thing however we have gotten to a point now where we grow more than can be used so we try to force others to buy our corn and we spend fortunes on ways to grow more corn through oil based products when we would be much better off growing less corn and having farmers grow other cash crops for food and energy that don’t require as much energy input in the first place. Always blew my mind to think about using more and more petroleum-based chemicals to grow more corn to create ethanol in order to supplement our petroleum needs. Why not use the petroleum for the fuel and cut out the excess corn, which is not that, good, a feedstock for ethanol anyway. Again I must say that I am not against corn for ethanol. What I am for is a reasonable way to use biobased products in a way that is beneficial not detrimental. Other feedstocks that we have are far better for ethanol production; they just don’t have as efficient a lobby as corn does.

Now it may seem as though I have rambled on a bit about several different topics. But really it all comes down to what I started off with. Common sense, pragmatism and loving our neighbors, profits are good, greed is bad. Common Sense is not encouraged to grow through the use of petroleum-based fertilizer; it grows best in natural fertilizer by learning to cut through all the bullshit. Pragmatism becomes the foundation of the growing common sense and the idea of loving thy neighbor, well baby if that aint the best fruit for us to harvest I don’t know what is.