Gulf oil spill

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Is Earth Day Passé?

by Marlo Lewis on April 22, 2011

in Features

I just checked the Web sites of eight leading eco-activist groups, curious as to how prominently the organizations are featuring Earth Day messages and activities.

Surprisingly, seven of the groups — Center for Biological Diversity, EarthJustice, Environmental Defense Fund, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council — say nary a word about Earth Day.

Sierra Club is the sole partial exception — they’re offering a $15 gift if you join the organization on Earth Day. It’s almost as if green pressure groups are as sheepish about Earth Day as their congressional allies are about the policy that dare not speak its name — cap-and-trade. 

So if they’re not advertising Earth Day, what are they talking about? Six of the eight groups’ Web sites feature strikingly similar photos and messages about the April 2010 BP oil spill:

  • Center for Biological Diversity – “Gulf Disaster One Year Later”
  • EarthJustice – “One Year After the Gulf Oil Spill”
  • Environmental Defense Fund – “One Year After BP Disaster, Congress Lags Its Response”
  • Greenpeace – “Deep Water Horizon One Year On”
  • National Wildlife Federation – “Status of the Gulf: Wildlife and Wetlands One Year after the Gulf Oil Disaster”
  • Natural Resources Defense Council – “Disaster in Gulf Lives On”

Groupthink (“We are Borg . . .”) can afflict partisans of any agenda, but it is endemic to ideologies demanding ever-greater political control over economic decisions.