Earth Day, April 22, is nigh upon us once again. Started as a way of raising awareness of environmental issues and highlighting their solutions, this year’s might be seen as a time to celebrate, at least from a PR standpoint. An Inconvenient Truth last summer renewed interest in global warming in an American public still reeling from Hurricane Katrina, and even President Bush has taken the monumental first step of paying lip service to the climate change phenomenon. Lip service! My laws! Yet such victories are, for now, hollow. Denial of global warming, while waning in scope, continues to shape perception and policy, and even those at the forefront for change are proving reluctant to lead the way.

First things first: global warming is a scientifically accepted FACT. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just a couple months ago released a damning report that says with 90+% certainty that not only is the Earth rapidly warming, human actions are overwhelmingly responsible, and consequences grow more dire the longer we wait to do something about it (the U.S., China, and Russia later, in a rare act of unanimity, successfully lobbied for less forceful language in the final report. Go figure). The IPCC says it; our National Academy of Sciences and the science academies of the other G8 nations, along with Brazil, China, and India say it; there is little doubt of mankind’s culpability among climate scientists who aren’t being funded by oil companies and free market think-tanks, yet there has long been, and is, a fierce opposition to the idea of man-made global warming and its economic implications, and a popular movie featuring Al Gore provided the deniers with an easy target while avoiding the issue.

To be sure, Gore has had his share of missteps. He wrote his first book on global warming, Earth in the Balance, back in 1992, just before ascending to the Vice Presidency, where he was poised for eight years to make fundamental changes regarding our nation’s CO2 emissions and oil dependency, and instead oversaw the rise of the SUV as America’s vehicle of choice. Meanwhile the brouhaha over Gore’s energy usage is actually not as big a deal as one would think since a great deal of the energy used is renewable, but the amount used is still a damned lot. Gore also has, on occasion, fumbled with the science, claiming the effects of the Clean Air Act were visible in Antarctic ice cores and overplaying the connection with hurricane frequency.

But while Gore’s personal record may be questionable, his treatment of the science has on the whole been consistent with the scientific consensus and is virtually unimpeachable (unlike his 1992 running mate, hardy har har). Meanwhile, global warming “skeptics” (because obviously scientists can’t be trusted to be skeptical) like Senator Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and James Inhofe (R-OK) beggar the imagination by calling it a hoax. This sentiment has been echoed in Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, a novel about a group of environmentalists who cause natural disasters in order to raise money to fight global warming. In 2005 President Bush invited Crichton to the White House (instead of a climatologist) to discuss that subject, and (surprise!) found they were in complete agreement. Later that year Crichton was invited to testify to the Senate on the same topic (once again, instead of an actual climatologist). This was around the same time a former petroleum industry lobbyist brought on to Bush’s staff, Philip Cooney, got caught watering down climate change documents, resigned, and went to work for Exxon.

One could say that these people are as intellectually and ethically bankrupt as global warming is scientifically sound and, based on the partisan lines which are being drawn on this issue, no one would dissent. Resistance to the truth of man-made climate change, even as evidence stacks up in its favor, is becoming more and more an exclusively Republican stance. This is due to a misplaced skepticism that thinks it’s all a fantasy cooked up by environmentalist radicals instead of a scientifically verified fact that some greens go to extremes to combat. Many objections have thus been aired, such as the so-called Martian global warming resulting from increased solar radiation, which conveniently neglects to mention the warming is confined to Mars’ lower, currently-summered hemisphere, and that the planet’s atmosphere is much thinner than ours.

Another favorite is the supposed “global cooling” alarmism of the 1970s, extrapolated from a few choice headlines from the era. One would think the people who incessantly harp about the so-called liberal media would know such coverage does not always accurately reflect reality, and yet the meme persists. In truth only a handful of scientists were predicting global cooling, while the rest of the scientific community in fact cautioned against making rash predictions in either direction without further data.

And yet another claim is that volcanoes put more CO2 into the air in one blast than all of humanity in a decade. It’s just. Not. TRUE. The bottom line is scientists aren’t stupid, and they’ve doubtless factored in the myriad variables that could affect Earth’s climate. It sounds servile, but it’s true: they’re the experts. If more Americans would drop their anti-science “skepticism,” maybe other countries would stop seeing us as that developed nation that collectively denies the validity of evolution, even as it puts The Missing Link into office for eight years.

But many of those who have long seen the writing on the wall, instead of just focusing on major investment in alternative fuels and simply using less energy, have focused on solutions that actually make the problem worse, such as Carbon Neutrality. This involves paying an extra tithing for carbon-producing activities like air travel in order to pay for alternative energy research. The problem with this, as noted by mega-environmentalist George Monbiot, is its indulgence-like manner of assuaging guilt while doing nothing to encourage people to conserve energy, creating the ludicrous paradox of requiring people to make the problem worse in order to fund a solution for it.

Nowhere is this mindset more apparent than in the upcoming “Live Earth” shows, a series of concerts around the world designed to raise awareness of global warming, ala Live Aid. The concerts are to be held on every continent, including Antarctica (!). What better way to educate people about runaway energy usage than encouraging them to spew tons of CO2 into the atmosphere by traveling several thousands of miles to a bunch of concerts and watching mostly crappy pop stars perform with the aid of a wall of amps that will use enough energy to power Afghanistan? It’s like having an eat-off to fight African hunger. Jesus tap dancing Christ.

Yet all the hand-wringing over global warming is ultimately secondary. The greater issue is resource depletion and waste. Pollution, global warming, litter and endangered species all stem from it. Our school’s close proximity to Wal-Mart ensures the purchase of lots of cheap, “disposable” plastic goods like iPods made to crap out after only a year. And how much energy is wasted on lights, air conditioning systems and appliances left on when nobody’s home? These are things anyone can change. Meanwhile the school is tossing magazines and computer paper together to be recycled, expecting Les’ Sanitary Services to sort it out, which they say they don’t do for anyone. Does anyone know where it’s ending up? Does anyone care?

So this Earth Day, in spite of global warming’s raised profile, is very much business as usual: beyond carbon taxes and alternative energies and recycling, all good proposals, the simplest way for the everyman to decrease his impact remains that simple bumper sticker maxim: “Need Less.” Less children; less pointless material possessions; less unnecessary driving; and less bloated, misguided charity concerts.