WE'RE STILL HERE.

It's Earth Day, and it's worth noting, yet again, how a cause that might have been motivated by the Cuyahoga River catching fire, by inedible fish in some of the Great Lakes, or by the health risks that rescue divers ran in Chicago, was quickly captured by the scare-mongers.

The scare-mongers are still at it. "On this 54th Anniversary of America's first Earth Day celebration, it is a time to reflect on how we moved from a consensus on the urgent need for environmental protection across the country to woefully underestimating the need for action about climate change."

That's Common Dreams contributor Katrina Rogers, and note the pivot from general environmental protection to specific climate change.  Along the way, there was the population bomb, global famine, and a new ice age.  We're still here.  It's still using scare tactics to sell collectivism.

Think I'm kidding?  Here's another Common Dreams contributor, Andy Rowell.

This Earth Day, the theme is “Planet versus Plastics.” According to the IEA plastics are set to drive nearly half of new oil demand growth by mid-century. So, the industry’s Plan A for survival is to convince you that they are integral to the climate fight, and Plan B is to push plastics. Both of these are flawed. “Plastics is the Plan B for the fossil fuel industry,” argues Judith Enck, Founder and President of Beyond Plastics.

Both the industry’s Plan A and B will tip us into climate chaos. If we are going to reduce our use of plastics, we have to reduce our use of oil. To do that, we must see through the spin and continue to push for a fast, fair, full, and funded phaseout of fossil fuels.

It's a non-trivial challenge, concedes Pajamas Media's Rick Moran.

Plastics are absolutely essential to human life on Earth. As packaging for food, they have extended the time that foods stay fresh so we're able to ship them around the world, feeding billions of people. They are light and strong, making ideal containers for liquid.

And they have thousands of other uses in industry, medicine, and other vital sectors of the economy.

But the world is choking on plastics. And the biggest reason for that is that they take hundreds of years to decompose. Even then, they never fully disappear. They just get smaller.

The whole point of using plastic is that it's dirt cheap. To make plastic more environmentally friendly would jack the price up beyond reason. So biodegradable plastic is not going to be in widespread use anytime soon.

This is a problem that threatens human life on Earth.

Although it's true that plastic shampoo tubes or milk or pop bottles are less prone to breaking than their glass predecessors, it's not as if some substitutions are unreasonable.  The past track record of the doomsday environmentalists, though, might be what tries Mr Moran's patience.

We tend to forget that our bodies are extraordinary machines. Are we selling that machinery short when it comes to fighting off the effects of microplastics?

The same can be said of the Earth. Our planet has been around for more than 4 billion years and has weathered planet-destroying collisions with all kinds of objects. Earth is still here despite everything that the universe has been able to throw at it.

I'll place my bet on the human body and planet Earth to survive plastics. But only if we make a concerted effort to clean up the mess that our genius has made.

That might include, if our chemists are figuring out how large chunks of plastics break down into those annoying microparticles, how to adopt that to retrieving the molecules for reuse, in like manner to reclaiming the electrolytes of batteries.