Happy Earth Day to all the climate change skeptics out there.
Today's the day when pseudo environmentalists pat themselves on the back for flirting with the idea of decreasing pollution.
Like most reasonable people I too am an advocate for decreasing pollution.
But, since we're on the subject, let's take a trip back in time as we tell the story of Ira "Unicorn Killer" Einhorn, the creator of Earth Day.
Earth Day was an idea first conceived by Einhorn & his friends back in the late 60s.
Ira was your typical leftist hippie: a part of the anti-establishment counter-culture, he and his comrades were greatly concerned about the future of the earth and he believed the invisible hand of government was the only way of stopping unnatural mankind from spreading across our delicate planet like a disease (as in overpopulation - more on this later). So Ira and his progressive pals organized the first Earth Day event. Despite the claims of revisionist historians, Ira was heavily involved in organizing the event and even played the role of MC for a live broadcast from the first Earth Day celebration in Philadelphia. The event was something of a success (in terms of attendance, not affecting actual change) with similar events following by example sporadically across the country.
A couple years later Ira met a girl from Tyler, Texas named Holly Maddux. Holly was your average American girl, having recently graduated from Bryn Mawr College, she wanted what most young women want: true love. When she met Ira the two became an item and eventually moved in together. But young love doesn't always turn out how some would hope and after a few years Holly broke up with Ira and moved to NYC.
On Sept. 9 of 1977, she returned to the apartment she once shared with Einhorn to collect her things and she was never seen r heard from again.
A few weeks later the Philadelphia police questioned Ira about her disappearance. He claimed Holly had gone out to the neighborhood food co-op to buy some tofu and sprouts (which is something hippies do), and never returned. The police were skeptical but they took him at his word and continued to investigate.
Eventually, Ira's neighbors began complaining about a horrible smell coming from his apartment, which in turn aroused the suspicion of the po-po. Then on March 28, 1979, Maddux's decomposing corpse was found by police in a trunk stored in a closet in Einhorn's apartment (he had plenty of time to move this trunk but neglected to do so because he was either lazy, psychotic or a little of both).
After the cops found Holly, one of the officers said to Einhorn, "It looks like we found Holly," to which Einhorn replied, "You found what you found". A poet laureate, he was not.
In 1981, just days before his murder trial was to begin, Einhorn skipped bail and fled to Europe. He moved around Europe for the next 17 years and eventually married a Swedish woman named Annika.
Back in Pennsylvania, since Ira had already been arraigned, the state convicted him in 1993 for Maddux's murder. Einhorn was sentenced to life in prison with no parole despite not being present for his own trial.
Then in 1997 Ira was discovered living in France under the name Eugène Mallon (the Frenchiest name he could come up with). He was arrested and eventually sent back to the US (although the process of extraditing him back to the States was rather complicated and took about 4 years - isn't the government great?).
To this day Ira is still rotting away in a Pennsylvania prison. Good riddance.
But what about Ira's life work? Did Earth Day accomplish what it was originally supposed to do when they first conceived the idea? Well, as I mentioned earlier, Earth Day was originally created because of a fear that overpopulation would eventually make Earth uninhabitable. Interestingly enough, here in 2019 less than 3% of the occupiable parts of Earth are covered in urban landscape. Not exactly a cause for concern, eh? Overpopulation isn't really an issue in most parts of the world.
But the environmentalists didn't stick with the overpopulation-crusade for too long. Eventually they moved on to the next big thing: global cooling. Yes, 2nd-wave environmentalists thought pollution would cause the Earth to freeze, not overheat.
After their tirade against overpopulation and global-cooling lost it's excitement among the environmentalists, the movement proceeded onward to their fears of "global warming" (a fear that became common among their flock over 30 years ago). Eventually, during an extended period of time known as "The Pause" (when the Earth showed no signs of temperature increase for multiple decades), the "global warming" talking point turned into "climate change", meaning any instance of extreme or unusual weather was proof of the negative consequences endured from carbon based emissions. Hurricane in Miami? Blame Ford F150s. Tornado in Oklahoma? Chevy Blazers. Sharknados on cable TV? Actually... We should probably blame stoners for that one.
Then in the early 2000s a group of highly respected climate scientists in England said very soon it will permanently stop snowing everywhere on Earth until the end of time. It turns out they were wrong.
It's pretty obvious that the environmentalists have a history of alarming and highly inaccurate predictions about the weather but my favorite of all is still Al "Manbearpig" Gore who famously said by the year 2016 Earth would be covered in water. Sure, flooding occasionally happens from time to time, but that's not a weather condition that's unique to the 21st century. Did any of y'all swim to work this week? No? Me neither. Talk about an inconvenient truth.
But what about Ira Einhorn aka the Unicorn Killer himself? Was he completely wrong about his concerns for Mother Earth? Yes, of course, but (forgive me while I play devil's advocate) in some ways, for the Unicorn-Killer, many of those environmental-alarmist predictions actually did come true. Sort of (if only in his own little world). Think about it: he lives in prison where it's overcrowded, it never snows, it's too cold in his cell in the winter and too hot in the summer. But hey, at least he's not underwater.
So happy Unicorn Killer Day, everyone! Celebrate by riding in your SUVs and spraying aerosol hair spray canisters into the air (which environmentalists were also wrong about). Just don't litter. Littering sucks.