Al Gore Effect Visits Earth Day in Progressive Paradise

Photo by Rachel Burkholder

I did feel sorry for the bundled-up-against-the-cold-wind-and-rain folks celebrating Earth Day yesterday here in Progressive Paradise, where one group gamely set about making smoothies with a bicycle-powered blender.

Despite hope for change (as long as the change is not a warmer globe), Progressive Paradise did not turn into a tropical paradise where heating is unnecessary, air conditioning is undesirable, and raw materials for smoothies are available for plucking off the nearest tree.

Mother Earth, a realist if ever there was one, offered her wanna-be protectors a lesson in reality when the wet chill she supplied for the Earth's Day celebration deteriorated into a late-night snow and ice storm that bent trees to the ground, closed area schools, and left about 4,000 (so far) local people without power. 

In other words, Earth Day celebrants got their wish, sort of. Right on cue, school buses stopped guzzling gas, as did the automobiles of parents who otherwise would have driven to gainful employment or on errands utilizing the services goods provided by the gainfully employed.

Bike paths were uncongested, leaving home-bound Earth Day celebrants who happen to own a bicycle-powered blender with an available bicycle with which to churn up tasty smoothies, provided that they are able bodied and had on hand fruits and vegetables grown in a more southern clime and transported north to their local health-food store, presumably by bicycle cart. Unless, of course, they still had in storage in their not-yet bicycle-powered home freezer some of the home-grown fruits and vegetables they harvested about eight months ago.

Like most days when Mother Nature's personal calendar reads: "snow day in Progressive Paradise," today plenty of burning logs in fireplaces and wood stoves (a favorite heating source of Earth Day celebrants) are pumping quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere at rates far surpassing other fuels, particularly the natural gas that Earth Day groups urged others to refrain from using (except when home-canning local foods with that bicycle-powered pressure canner manufactured from metal ores hand-shoveled from the Earth, refined by bicycle power, and manufactured in a garage somewhere in California).

I know, I know, it's science in its infancy. Well, maybe toddlerhood. Here's a design that was used in 1881, before the development of 58 ferad ultracapacitors and 1000 watt power inverters:

I think we should send one to BO to operate in the White House garden. Pending approval by PETA and the Department of Energy.

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