Happy Earth Day 2010

If you'd told me as a teenager, back in the 1970s, that I'd someday write something with the title "Happy Earth Day 2010", my mind would've nearly exploded. First of all, Two Thousand and Ten was the sort of year you only encountered in science fiction and comic books back then. The words "Earth Day", as well, would have evoked a sort of futuristic vision in which perhaps humanity were celebrating the Earth on this particular day in 2010 from the far reaches of Mars, Venus and the Moon. Flying cars would've already become de rigeur back in 2001 or earlier, of course.

In fact, it didn't quite work out that way. Sure, things like the iPhone and GPS devices in cars are still pretty impressive symbols of technological advances, but they hardly compare with seeing Earthrise on the red planet. On the other hand, if we keep abusing the home planet at the rate that we're doing these days, we may have to up and move to another sphere just to survive. Even Earth Day 2030 may be a bittersweet event if we don't become a lot smarter in the next couple of decades. I'm just saying.