Rural Thoughts

"Earth Day" is tomorrow. It has been observed since 1970 and is supposed to be an annual reminder that our impacts on the planet matter. There apparently isn't time to think about that these days - much more important things to report about.

Today, after watching at least part of Bartiromo's Wall Street show, Meet the Press, Inside Washington, To the Contrary, McLaughlin Group, and Comment on Kentucky, Kristi asked me if I had heard Earth Day mentioned once. I was taken aback a bit, because I realized immediately that I hadn't, and that this was a huge omission in the preparations for this particular news show day.

The Secret Service and their unpaid prostitutes, the polls between Obama and Romney, and other much more important issues than how we are treating the environment dominated the news. It's almost as if Don McClain, in his famous song "American Pie" was really talking about the planet as a whole, using music as a metaphor, when he sang about the "day the music died."

If we, as a society, can't focus on the environment one day a year, when we are facing, minute by minute, increasingly serious environmental problems, then the odds are they are going to keep getting worse. The question then becomes, by the time that these chronic, global and beyond issues bloom and start to affect large amounts of people directly, will there be any solutions that are affordable and won't make the problem worse?

Sunday News Shows, you disappoint today. You don't even have to think out of the box - you are still in the box - in recognizing Earth Day - but you blew it. It proves something, but I wouldn't want to speculate what.