15 FUN FACTS ABOUT EARTH DAY

15 FUN FACTS ABOUT EARTH DAY

Properly dispose of your trash and children by feeding them to The Sod Monster.

1) Earth Day was invented by Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, on April 22nd 1970, in an valiant effort to make people spend their time caring about the environment instead of snickering at his first name.
2) Earth Day is celebrated every year on April 22nd, which, coincidentally, is Russian dictator V.I. Lenin’s birthday. Although Lenin was too busy being dead to directly participate in the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, visitors to his tomb that day swear they heard chuckling.
3) An early supporter of the Earth Day movement was “Population Bomb” author Paul Erlich, whose work presciently predicted the widespread famines and food riots that killed millions of Americans during the Reagan years.
4) One of the most popular Earth Day activities is to reduce usage of water – a rare and precious commodity which few living people have seen outside of pictures – of which barely 400 quadrillion gallons currently remain.
5) Most Earth Day functions you will attend put out “recycling bins” to collect plastic water bottles. This reduces waste and pollution by having the containers hauled away separate from the garbage bins by 20-ton diesel trucks that get 3 miles to the gallon.
6) On Earth Day 2005, over 1000 people stood on a Canadian ice floe to spell out the words “Artic Warming,” which, unfortunately, local polar bears mis-read as “Free Crunchy Meat Snacks.”
7) The EPA offers a free newsletter with handy Earth Day tips such as “Keep appliances in good working order.” Which is completely useless advice as it doesn’t tell you whether to use a fork or a knife to fix your toaster.
8) Some folks enjoy writing “6 word essays” on Earth Day, like “Many nations. One planet. Our home.” Mostly people who portrayed Indians in westerns during the 1950′s.
9) In preparation for Earth Day, teachers are encouraged to help children learn about global warming by periodically poking them with an “alertness stick” during a screening of “An Inconvenient Truth”.
10) One of the biggest crises addressed during the first Earth Day celebrations was ozone depletion. We don’t give a crap about that any more.
11) Sadly, although Earth Day was founded on an ideal of environmental justice, American law schools still hand out very few degrees to spotted owls.
12) On Earth Day 2003, students in the UK set a world record by planting 4100 trees, which were later cut down by men who skip and jump, like to press wild flowers, put on women’s clothing, and hang around in bars.
13) One of the watchwords of Earth Day is “reuse.” If you see a hobo begging for change using an old Slurpee cup, give him a big ‘ol Earth Day hug of thanks.
14) On the first Earth Day in 1970, activists spilled oil on the sidewalk outside the U.S. Department of the Interior to protest against offshore drilling, completely destroying the crab-fishing industry in the DC metro area.
15) The EPA was founded shortly after, and because of, the first Earth Day in 1970. Since its inception, the EPA has saved enough electricity to power 2 million homes by enforcing laws that prevent power plants from creating that electricity.
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Final thought:
Every time someone makes a list of Earth Day activities, they’re really just telling you how you can make hippies cry by doing the opposite.