E-Day, Not Earth Day

Earth day is becoming outdated. It is an annual feast, albeit somewhat austere and backward looking, of celebrating and urging the simple life, the medieval life. Earth day is a symbol of negatives, of not acquiring, not spending, not importing, working less, trading less. It seems to mean growing everything yourself, carding your own wool, spinning your own thread, weaving and sewing your own clothing. Maybe trading eggs for butter, etc. with neighbors, but no world market.

Stalwart environmentalists began in 1969, a movement which celebrates, each spring equinox, “Peace, Justice, and Care of the Earth.”

March 20, 2024 at 1:48 , a. m. EDT (Equinox), according to one writer was the 38th Earth Day. We do know, however, that the rest of the world is about to celebrate it on April 22nd.

Regardless of the date, it is important to note what that writer struck as a theme: this is the time to “get off the grid”, although this clearly meant more than getting off the electric energy grid.

Oil Day

This article deals with a different day, “Profit, Power, and Exploitation of Earth”, known among some as Oil Day. The present time is not a time to look back and to begin denying ourselves the full benefits of being “on the grid” or various features of modern living. This writer calls this a day to begin saving for the day when we must replace oil.

The other writer posits a world, based on the Earth Day movement program, that our lives would be so much better if we would “get off the grid.” This is expressed in a test, which is included in this article, “Earth Day No. 38,” in which a program is laid out, without the slightest hint of sarcasm, parody or satire; sincere, with no smidgen of cynicism.

We would all love to experience life in a place like the mythical Samoa , where it was once said that you could just make love and pick fruit from trees all year around. Of course, in most places in the world, work is needed to exist, and to have some happiness. To ignore the principle of division of labor and to forgo exchange or trade leaves you in the position of Robinson Crusoe. This is not a sweet spot of happiness.

Let me add one question to the list in that article:

Do you blog or publish articles on the Internet?

If you do and plan to continue to do so, you are on the grid and cannot get off.

A lot of work is required by many people to produce the safety, heat, light, food, retirement funds, etc., and a lot of this is made affordable in today's world by division of labor and trade. This division of labor and exchange now extends across the whole globe. It could have been otherwise.

You cannot get off the grid.

Can you generate your own electricity? You need geo-thermal energy in the ground, solar power or wind generators to do that. Those are out of reach for most Americans.

Create a community wind farm? This only works where the wind blows steadily all year.

Solar power? You need sunshine several hours every day of the year.

Geo-thermal? Only if you live near Yellowstone Park .

When the price of a barrel of oil hits $120 and “sticks”, it will probably march steadily upward. When it hits $150 a barrel, and Americans have been saving, then real investing will begin in hydrogen fuel cells and nuclear power plants. It will make our progress to date in those areas look puny.

This is because it requires the essential signal from the market, namely prices, to tell us where we need to move our resources. If you screw around with the market of energy, the information we need, prices, will not tell us the truth.

There is, however, one small problem: Americans are not saving. We are not prepared to invest sufficiently in new technology to replace our old sources of energy. Borrowing is not the answer, for loans require funds that someone has saved.

Saving is only possible if we forgo consumption in the present. But true saving is not putting our excess earnings into the mattress. True saving means investing in capital goods (human and physical) that will produce more and better things in the future.

That future will not come about by adopting a simple life where we generate no surplus.

Primitive Day

A world where you produce your own wood, energy, food, clothing, etc., or where it is all produced locally, is a world where you cannot grow a bushel of wheat with one hour's labor), is a surreal world.

It is a phantagoric combination of the real and the wish. Too little of the world's land supports growing wheat with so little effort. It is done at that rate by mass-production in Canada . To some extent it can be done in the Upper Midwest of the USA and in Argentina . It is not just food that relies on resources, land, work and an effective market. Producing energy also does.

Too many people live in places where heat and light requires expending 10-30 hours per month of work, in public utility payments. This is due to mass-production and distribution. It requires a large, sophisticated grid. You would be hard-pressed to do this on your own with fewer hours of work per month.

The question is not what we should get off, but what should get off us.

That other writer extolled the virtues of getting off the grid, but the grid is not the enemy, government is. That is what we need to get off. Get it off our backs!

“Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.”

Etienne de la Boetie, 1553.

Government is the absence of market. A free market is what we need. We don't need to get out of the market, just get the government out. It has nothing to do with Earth Day, growing your own food or eliminating the use of money.

End of Oil Day

The day when oil becomes just a lubricant again is the day when, after it became too expensive as fuel, and several viable alternatives have come to market. This is at least 20-30 years away.

The end of oil is not the problem. The problem is how to end government. What we need is a day that could come even sooner than that. An even better day will be when government evaporates, E-Day .