TDS Time Machine | Earth Day

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 2 You're listening to Comedy Central.

Speaker 3 America celebrates Earth Day.

Speaker 3 Only 363 shopping days until next Earth Day. Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio joined forces in Washington Saturday, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Earth Day.

Speaker 3 The celebration was held amidst a rock festival atmosphere, except there was no rock, no festival, and as we all learned from the speakers, no atmosphere.

Speaker 5 We have to make the next 10 years the environment decade in America and around the world.

Speaker 5 We have to stand against the apologists for pollution, those who believe in the old politics of environmental irresponsibility.

Speaker 3 Inspiring words. From a man whose 1992 bestseller, Earth in the Balance, now sits in landfills across the country.

Speaker 3 The crowd was also treated to the music of David Crosby, who was then treated to the sound of people heading over to the Smithsonian to see Archie Bunker's chair.

Speaker 3 Leonardo DiCaprio's much-debated Bill Clinton interview also aired this weekend. The president took Leo on a tour of the dimly lit and romantic White House.

Speaker 6 We started a project here at the White House called the greening of the White House. Just by changing the lighting in this whole building, we lowered our electric bills by $100,000 a year.
Wow.

Speaker 7 After blowing his wow wad early,

Speaker 3 DiCaprio scoured his journalist's handbook for other stinging retorts like, geez, and awesome, and can a player get a table dance?

Speaker 3 The day after Thanksgiving, you feel stuffed. The day after Valentine's Day, loved or angry.
And the day after Earth Day, you feel mildly embarrassed that you forgot yesterday was Earth Day. Our Sam B

Speaker 3 has another take.

Speaker 1 Planet Earth, we can't seem to do enough for it.

Speaker 1 We celebrate it, clean it. We even featured Leo in an issue of Vanity Fair about it.
And for all we do, how does Mother Earth treat us

Speaker 1 with a human kill rate of 100%?

Speaker 1 Mother Nature is one ungrateful whore.

Speaker 1 Clearly, the Earth hates our freedom, but try telling that to the Blame Humans First crowd.

Speaker 1 Alright, so here I am at Earth Day talking to some stupid hippie about some stupid food.

Speaker 10 The Earth isn't doing anything bad.

Speaker 1 We're doing the bad things to the Earth. Okay, isn't it a a little childish to talk about who started what when and who's doing what to whom? The point is, we're in this war and we have to win it.

Speaker 11 You know, we're really psyched about this product. It's new from Stonyfield.
It comes in several different flavors. It's strawberry banana.

Speaker 1 Should it taste like feet?

Speaker 9 I learned from Mother Earth.

Speaker 1 Oh, really?

Speaker 9 Yes, I do.

Speaker 1 Okay, well, when you suckled at your mother's teeth, did molten hot lava pour out into your mouth?

Speaker 12 We've got 5% of the population using 25% of the natural resources, polluting 30% of the earth, and so that's a failed system.

Speaker 1 Do you do push-ups?

Speaker 11 No, I don't.

Speaker 15 People come out and we raise awareness, and

Speaker 9 we're being safe.

Speaker 1 To win this war, we may need science. So I met with NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt to find out how we can learn from our past mistakes.

Speaker 1 I'm just an average person without access to an earthquake ray or a death star. How can I join the fight against Earth?

Speaker 16 I really couldn't tell you.

Speaker 1 Statistically, aren't Americans more likely to get hit by lightning than attacked by terrorists?

Speaker 17 I think that's true.

Speaker 1 Then can we afford not to have a war on lightning?

Speaker 5 It'd be difficult to do.

Speaker 1 That's what they said about destroying the ozone layer, but score one for humans.

Speaker 16 Actually, the ozone layer is well on its way to recovery.

Speaker 16 Damn it!

Speaker 1 Fortunately, there is a way out.

Speaker 3 Today I announce a new plan to extend a human presence across our solar system with human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond.

Speaker 1 Until we can leave this box behind, Americans will need to make sacrifices.

Speaker 1 Even if that means touring around the country in a private jet, giving energy-guzzling PowerPoint presentations on some stupid crap, and releasing a movie about it.

Speaker 1 In the end, we all have to do what we can to make the planet more livable.

Speaker 3 When a news story falls to the cracks, our own Lewis Black catches it for a segment we call Back in Black.

Speaker 2 You can always tell it's Earth Day when the CO2 emissions from the world's smokestacks start paling in comparison to celebrity emissions telling us we can save the Earth if we start acting a little more like them.

Speaker 2 Just ask Matt Damon, who contributed this tip to Oprah Winfrey's Earth Day special.

Speaker 19 I've got a great one for you. If your house is anything like mine.

Speaker 4 Stop.

Speaker 20 It's not.

Speaker 20 It's a lot smaller and it doesn't have an afflex-shaped dent in the couch.

Speaker 2 Oprah herself showed off her Earth Day spirit by wearing a sweater she accidentally washed with her money

Speaker 2 and giving away earth-friendly products to her audience.

Speaker 21 We're going to bring out the bulb you can have a

Speaker 21 smart score.

Speaker 21 That's cool.

Speaker 8 Ooh, a light bulb giveaway, huh?

Speaker 2 You really think that'll undo the environmental damage caused by this?

Speaker 2 Everybody, get the car!

Speaker 2 Over on ABC 2020 both documented and lived out mankind's excess by flying reporters to file live reports from six of the seven continents.

Speaker 22 Every second of every single day, thousands of trees are being cut down. In fact, in just the one minute that I've been talking, an area the size of 60 football fields has been wiped out.

Speaker 2 Then for God's sakes, stop talking.

Speaker 20 Your inane blagger is raping the earth.

Speaker 2 Host Diane Sawyer talked to a scientist from Antarctica and found out it's cold there.

Speaker 23 You can step outside for a few seconds, but you certainly don't want to stand around for a minute or two. You get frostbitten very quickly at these temperatures.

Speaker 21 So is your pole thinning?

Speaker 2 I'll tell you right now, if I go through the trouble of placing a satellite call just to hear Diane Sawyer's voice, she better not thin my pole.

Speaker 20 Still, my favorite Earth Day special had to be this.

Speaker 2 Pip My Rye, a show devoted to creating the least efficient vehicles in human history, has the nerve to throw its own Earth Day celebration on Sunday.

Speaker 17 You probably want to ask, Matt Mike, are there really any benefits to using biodiesel?

Speaker 9 Hell yeah.

Speaker 5 This stuff reduces nasty diesel emissions by almost 80%.

Speaker 17 It ends as it rains, which I personally love because I hate that shit.

Speaker 9 B-

Speaker 2 It's a shame cars don't run on cognitive dissonance.

Speaker 2 Any other final thoughts?

Speaker 13 If everybody used recycled tissue even, you would have millions of trees still in the ground.

Speaker 21 I just want you to go now move to a cloth bag.

Speaker 13 Use less gasoline.

Speaker 17 There are kind of little things that you can do.

Speaker 19 Do something wonderful for your life and get rid of this junk.

Speaker 8 So there you have it.

Speaker 2 Advice on saving planet Earth from a bunch of people who couldn't even save planet Hollywood.

Speaker 3 Now we saw President Bush in the Great Outdoors. He talked about how he loves owning his ranch in Texas.
Clearly, he's a friend to the environment, but who else is?

Speaker 3 As Matt Wallace recently found out, the Earth's best friend may well be the logging industry.

Speaker 10 For decades, children have been enchanted by Dr. Seuss's silly tales, from the cat in the hat and Horton Hears a Who, to later stories like the Lorax.

Speaker 24 I'll never forget the grim look on his face

Speaker 24 when he heisted himself and took leave of this mother.

Speaker 17 He's holding his butt.

Speaker 24 He's heisting himself by the seat of his pain.

Speaker 17 He's holding his butt.

Speaker 10 But Terry Burkitt, a concerned mother of two, says there's more to the Lorax than meets the eye.

Speaker 24 The Lorax is being used to present a very preservationist point of view that we are running out of trees.

Speaker 10 I had no idea. Could the warm and fuzzy Lorax actually be a radical tree hugger hell-bent on destroying the wood products industry?

Speaker 10 Burkitt says this is yet another example of moneyed special interests gone too far.

Speaker 24 There's a lot of money in the hands of environmental organizations, and the wood products industry is basically busy going to work every day, and they have not had the money to get their story out.

Speaker 10 Yes, with only billions in revenue to work with, mom-and-pop companies like Weyerhauser and International Paper have been backed into a corner.

Speaker 10 So Burkitt drew on her experience as a mother and as an assistant plant manager for a wood flooring manufacturer to write a book that teaches children cutting down trees makes the forest happy.

Speaker 10 She called it TrueX.

Speaker 24 People in the wood products industry are environmentalists, and that's what I try to get across in TrueX.

Speaker 10 Her book got picked up by a boutique indie publisher called the National Oak Flooring Manufacturers Association.

Speaker 10 And with nearly half a million copies in print, TrueX is fast replacing Lorax in classrooms across America.

Speaker 14 I'm TrueX the logger. I harvest these trees for ball bats and houses

Speaker 14 and things such as these.

Speaker 10 And the kids love it.

Speaker 14 Biodiversity. Will this still be there when the trees have been sold?

Speaker 10 But in any goodwood products curriculum, reading materials must be supplemented with hands-on learning.

Speaker 4 everything i'm showing you today is waterproof okay it's gonna last you a lifetime it's an investment but it lasts your lifetime now when you get venetian blinds you're gonna want to match the blinds to the flooring you don't want them to contrast okay and remember the blinds match the floor say that the blinds match the floor kids seem to really appreciate the wood products industry so why didn't dr seus

Speaker 10 I put that question to a Seuss spokesman. So you speak for the trees, correct?

Speaker 25 I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees!

Speaker 10 Well, I have a copy of your most recent tax return, and it seems to me you do more than just speak for the trees.

Speaker 25 I'm also in charge of the brown barbalutes, who played in the shade in their barbalut suits.

Speaker 10 How do you respond to allegations that you're just a hired gun who will work for any organization that will pay you?

Speaker 10 You're nothing more than a two-bit shill.

Speaker 8 Listen to me, you motherfuck. I am the Lorax.
I don't have to answer these f ⁇ ing questions. This interview's over.
Where are you going?

Speaker 17 This is f ⁇ ing bullshit.

Speaker 8 Who else do you work for? Get away from me, newsman!

Speaker 3 Friday, April 22nd was Earth Day. And that, of course, oddly enough, April 22nd is the day in 2012 on which the Earth will end.

Speaker 8 You heard her here first.

Speaker 3 President Bush marked the event by riding his airborne SUV to Tennessee to visit the Great Smoky Mountains, ironically our nation's most polluted national park.

Speaker 3 But he wound up stuck on the tarmac due to a sudden burst of hail and thunderstorms because the earth hates him so much.

Speaker 3 But the president soldiered on with a speech, making a slight adjustment intense.

Speaker 5 In the park, had I been there, I'd have reminded people today's Earth Day.

Speaker 3 But since I'm not there,

Speaker 3 let me skip right ahead to talking about our good friend, the high sulfur coal plant.

Speaker 5 We didn't create this earth, but we have an obligation to

Speaker 5 protect it. One of the interesting things about our nation

Speaker 5 is that since 1970, the air is cleaner and the water is more pure, and we're using our land better,

Speaker 5 and our economy has grown a lot.

Speaker 7 And then, and then, and then I showed up.

Speaker 9 The whole thing, the whole thing went to

Speaker 7 Noah.

Speaker 17 The whole thing went.

Speaker 3 Now, if you didn't notice, Majority Leader Bill Frist accompanied the president on the trip. Now, I'm going to replace him with the tape.
Keep your eye on Senator Bill Frist as the president speaks.

Speaker 5 We didn't create this earth, but we have an obligation to

Speaker 5 protect it. One of the interesting things about our nation

Speaker 5 is that since 1970, the air is cleaner and the water is more pure, and using our land better?

Speaker 5 Help me.

Speaker 3 You know, I was not there. Obviously, I wasn't there, and I was only watching this on videotape, so I am not really qualified to give a diagnosis, but

Speaker 3 it seems to me that Bill Frist was in a persistent vegetative state.

Speaker 17 I don't don't know that for sure.

Speaker 7 Of course, the biggest... Oh,

Speaker 3 never give an audience candy. The biggest environmental battle these days is over the proposal to drill in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Speaker 3 And those opposed to it are mobilized. And by mobilized, I mean armed with meringue.

Speaker 3 This weekend, in front of the Capitol Ice Cream, Moguls Ben and Jerry created the world's largest baked Alaska, presumably to raise awareness about the onwater legislation now moving through Congress.

Speaker 7 So there you have it.

Speaker 3 The state of liberal opposition in this country.

Speaker 8 We're very angry.

Speaker 3 Would anyone care for ice cream?

Speaker 3 Saturday was the 36th annual Earth Day, and who better to celebrate the Earth than the man who owns it. President George W.

Speaker 3 Bush visited a clean energy research consortium in Sacramento with a message of hope. This nation does not have to choose between a strong economy and a clean environment.

Speaker 20 You'll get neither and like it.

Speaker 20 Now eat up and get out.

Speaker 3 Of course, no Earth Day speech would be complete without mentioning the administration's favorite environmental pipe dream. I believe that today's children

Speaker 3 will one day take their driver's tests in a hydrogen-powered pollution-free car.

Speaker 3 And I believe teenagers will borrow those hydrogen cars from their future parents without permission and stay out past space curfew

Speaker 3 robo-necking with their cyborg boyfriends

Speaker 3 thought of that when I was on a bicycle

Speaker 3 and aside from the president well as best we can tell only one other place acknowledged Earth Day the Cartoon Network's boomerang channel which aired 13 lost episodes of the early 90s pro environment cartoon Captain Planet and the Planeteers

Speaker 19 how many things in your home are made from trees? Furniture, books, baseball bats, even your house's floors and framing.

Speaker 3 Gee, why didn't that ever take off?

Speaker 3 Mommy, I want to be the superhero that tells us what our house is made of.

Speaker 3 Don't taunt me.

Speaker 3 And what was Earth doing in the run-up to Earth Day?

Speaker 3 Well, over the last week, it gave us volcano erupting erupting in Peru, earthquakes in Tibet, Indonesia, and Japan, freak tornadoes in America and the Philippines, floods in Hungary, Romania, Malaysia, and Kenya, wildfires in Colorado, and a category five super cyclone about to destroy Darwin, Australia.

Speaker 9 You know,

Speaker 3 Earth, could you meet me over at camera three, please?

Speaker 3 Hey, Earth, how's it going?

Speaker 3 So I guess kissing your ass doesn't work.

Speaker 3 We call you beautiful, precious, mother. Gave you your own day.

Speaker 3 Just like veterans and groundhogs.

Speaker 3 Even named you planet of the year in 1988, even though by any objective estimation that was Neptune's year.

Speaker 3 We tried to make nice. What do you do? Not only do you kill us in a thousand different ways, but when we raise your temperature just a degree, one

Speaker 8 little degree, you're all, oh, it's so hot now, but

Speaker 18 I told her I scout your mountain.

Speaker 18 You're a pussy.

Speaker 9 I got news for you, Earth.

Speaker 3 You ain't the only rock in the neighborhood.

Speaker 7 You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 3 We got pictures. You've seen the moon? Very nice.
We've been there several times. You know, they've already got a golf course.

Speaker 3 Then there's Mars, a little red, a little rocky. It's a perfect fixer-upper.
We got Titan out by Saturn, very similar atmosphere to you,

Speaker 3 other than it's 290 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, but we're working on space jackets.

Speaker 3 We're through sucking up to you, home planet. You want to fight? Bring it on, bitch.
Because at this moment, I am declaring April 25th, f ⁇ the Earth Day.

Speaker 3 That's right.

Speaker 11 What are we going to do about that?

Speaker 3 That's going to be a day to drive your half-mile per hour gallon humscalade while spraying Aquanet at baby seals. You know why?

Speaker 17 Because we're not going out, baby.

Speaker 3 We're not going out like the dinosaurs, my brother.

Speaker 3 Without us, you're nothing but a billion-year-old, self-sustaining, self-regulating, organic Eden in complete harmony with itself.

Speaker 3 So f you.

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