So, What Have You Done For the Earth Today?

Warning: if you believe that evolution is a load of dookie, then this post is not for you.

It's Earth Day!

I'm in the "make every day Earth Day" camp, but not why you think.

People freak out about the damage humankind is doing to the Earth. Annihilating species. Global warming. Deforestation. Etc and so on and so forth.

But I have a news flash for all those hippies who think we're causing global warming: we're not. And even if we were, the Earth doesn't give a fuck.

The Earth has been around for a long time. A very long time. Like, 4 and a half billion years. Being around that long can mean only one thing: the Earth has seen this shit before. Short of a meteor winging out of nowhere and smashing the Earth in half, nothing is going to stop it from continuing its blue twirl around the Sun. Not humans, not anything (except that meteor).

I'm sure you've probably heard of Pangaea, even if you're not 100% sure what it was.

Pangaea was a supercontinent that existed about 300 million years ago. Basically, all of the landmass that we have today was all crammed together as one. Shifting tectonic plates in the Earth's crust slowly moved Pangaea apart into the continents we have today.

But not a lot of people realize that Pangaea was only the most recent supercontinent, and that the Earth's landmasses have been zipping around since practically the beginning of Earth. The earliest supercontinent, Vaalbara, existed between 3,100 million and 2,800 million years ago. Ish.

So why do supercontinents break up? Well, because of that tectonic plate thing I already mentioned. But they also explode apart! Large landmasses act as stoppers for Earth's internal heat, which means pressure builds up in there. Volcanoes let out some of the pressure, sure, but not enough to decrease the pressure significantly. So after a few million years, the pressure is finally too much, and it literally tears a continent in twain.

Like Africa. Have you heard of the Rift Valley lakes? Look them up. They are where Africa is going to split in half.

The process of supercontinent formation and breakup is called the Wilson Cycle, and it occurs about every 300-500 million years.

Wait a second... Pangaea existed 300 million--- oh fuck.

So what does this have to do with Earth Day? Well, when dinosaurs were still frolicking around, the entire Earth was tropical. Yes, even the poles. Imagine Florida everywhere. Now imagine that those dinosaurs didn't have little peabrains. Imagine they built a time machine and arrived in the year 2011 in... Utah. They'd probably think "holy shit! Where are the tropical jungles? It's freezing! It's a frickin' apocalyptic wasteland!"

But it's not a frickin' apocalyptic wasteland, time-traveling genius dinosaurs. It's just Utah. This is the way it's supposed to be in 2011.

Once upon a time, there were no flowers.

Once upon a time, there were no mammals.

Once upon a time, there were no birds.

Once upon a time, the oceans were so low that land bridges existed between Russia and North America, and Australia and Asia.

Once upon a time, a fucking meteor blasted a giant hole in the Earth and killed almost everything on the planet.

And yet, the Earth soliders on, and it ain't bovvered.

If a giant flaming piece of rock from outer space can't take out the Earth, what makes us think we can?

And yeah, species are going extinct. But you know what? It's happened before, a LOT. If I were to say "mass extinction," you'd probably think of the dinosaurs going extinct. And while that particular mass extinction was the most recent in Earth's history (68% of sea life and 75% of terrestrial life was wiped out), it wasn't the worst. The largest extinction event happened 251 million years ago and wiped out 96% of sea life and 70% of terrestrial life.

And all this before humans had even been conceived of.

The next great extinction event is probably going to involve humans. As in, we are the ones who will be going extinct. And that's fine, because it happens. It is estimated that 99% of all species that have ever lived are now extinct. So the odds of humans going extinct? Pretty good. Is it going to happen soon? Probably not. We're pretty adaptable, scrappy little things, and it will take a lot more than a meteor to render us nonexistent.

So, in conclusion, you should be nice to the Earth because it's been through a lot. Also, we kind of owe our entire existence to it. And if you go around wreckin' up the place, the Earth might just get fed up with your shit and decide to pull a "2012" on our asses.

Not cool, Earth. Not cool.