Earth Day 2009

Hello and welcome once again to another Earth Day rally celebration here at Chez Szondy. We were going to live blog it with streaming video using our servers powered exclusively by solar panels and windmills, but because it is generally overcast here, so there's no sun and we're in the middle of a pine forest, so there's no wind, we've had to make other arrangements.

Also, we regret that the much-anticipated Hug-a-Polar-Bear attraction has had to be shut down owing to our discovery that polar bears are not quite as placid as thought, resulting in the first (and only) participants being rapidly reduced to polar bear chow. We tried using a koala as a stopgap, but apparently even those little bastards can get a bit stroppy.

I don't even want to think about the rabbit savaging incident.

In keeping with our pledge to reduce the event's carbon footprint as much as possible, we have banned all internal combustion engines, Blessed Gaia curse their pistons, and requested that all participants travel by G-Wiz. Unfortunately, we are more than 35 miles from the nearest recharging point, so turnout has (again) been less than what we'd hoped and we have a couple of hundredweight of soy hotdogs that we've no idea what to do with, though the local farmers have made a few impertinent and highly personal suggestions.

However, we have much greater hopes for our zero-carbon drive and are certain that we can achieve our goal of producing no carbon dioxide whatsoever as soon as we can learn to do without that whole respiration thing. Some participants have managed to hold their breath for a full four minutes, though the hyperventilating after does tend to eat into the results.

The highlight of the day, however is the live-on-tape address by The One himself, President Barack Hussein Obama, to thank everyone for their hard work in convincing the public that massive spending on green programmes has anything at all to do with a bursting real estate bubble and to apologise for the Industrial Revolution, which he points out was before he was born, so it doesn't matter that much. It was a bit a pain getting the presidential Jumbotron up the hill on its 18-wheeler juggernaut lorry followed by its media centre van, stadium-grade portable diesel generator, and air-conditioned caravans for the crew, but it was well worth it if it helps Save the Planet^TM. The Provisional Assistant Deputy Environment Undersecretary and his 27-person entourage, who flew in via Gulfstream jets specially for the occasion, said that it was wonderful how we were doing our bit to help raise awareness about the dangers inherent in the very existence of the officially-designated pollutant, carbon, which taints us all as original sin in Blessed Gaia's eyes, and the need reduce its threat via a cap and trade tax regime that will make advanced industrial societies a thing of the the (prefeudal) past.

As for the traditional Earth Day sunset ceremony, Lord Summerisle has, for his usual nominal fee of 50 percent of the gross, assured us that we have purchased sufficient offsets from the Gore/Summerisle Carbon Credits Group that the virgin sacrifice and wicker man burning can go ahead as scheduled.

Gaia be praised.