Yes, I know, April Fool’s Day was three weeks ago. (I will comment upon Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brett Hulsey as soon as I determine that his candidacy is not in fact a tardy April Fool’s joke.) On the other hand, today is Earth Day, when Gaia is worshipped instead of the actual God.

This, which doesn’t mention Earth Day at all, comes from Mike Rowe:

Early this morning, one of San Francisco’s free newspapers found its way to the sidewalk in front of my apartment, proving yet again that you don‘t always get what you pay for. Because I abhor litter, I picked it up for deposit it in my mandatory recycling container. But not before glancing at the headline.

Apparently, this is their annual Green Issue, and their contention is pretty straightforward – work is killing the planet. Below the headline it gets better – “Climate Change Threats Revive the Long Forgotten Goal of Taking it Easier.”

Against my better judgment I took a peek inside, where a lengthy article spelled out a variety of examples about how the American work ethic is making the world hotter. Let me sum it for you. Hard work requires energy. Energy, as you surely know, is dirty, expensive, and bad. So, if we use less of it, we’ll not only save money, we’ll have more free time to follow our passion, and best of all, a more temperate planet for everyone. Ergo – work less and save the world!

We did two specials on Dirty Jobs called “Brown Before Green.” I don’t have anything new to add. However – if you run a foundation that’s based on the belief that “Work is Not the Enemy,” you can’t ignore a headline like this one.

I launched mikeroweWORKS on Labor Day of 2008. I did it because hard work and skilled labor need a PR Campaign. Too many Americans have become disconnected from the people who make our society function, and I believe that “disconnect” has informed a great many challenges we currently face as a country – including a widening skills gap, a crumbling infrastructure, and decades of offshoring. In short, I think we have a rotten relationship with work, and I suspect a lot of our current problems are a symptom of that relationship.

Occasionally, people say “Mike, what makes you believe such a thing? What makes you think that society is waging a war against hard work?” I have a book full of examples. And if I had seen this headline before I wrote it, I would have included one more…

Several of Rowe’s commenters pointed out the irony, in the words of one of them, of “printing a million newspapers and giving them away” for a Green Issue. Agreed another commenter, “like flying to a worldwide convention on energy conservation, pollution, or global warming in your Gulfstream G550.”

The free rag in question is the Bay Guardian, the cover story of which asserts:

Save the world, work less. That dual proposition should have universal appeal in any sane society. And those two ideas are inextricably linked by the realities of global climate change because there is a direct connection between economic activity and greenhouse gas emissions.

Simply put, every hour of work we do cooks the planet and its sensitive ecosystems a little bit more, and going home to relax and enjoy some leisure time is like taking this boiling pot of water off the burner.

Most of us burn energy getting to and from work, stocking and powering our offices, and performing the myriad tasks that translate into digits on our paychecks. The challenge of working less is a societal one, not an individual mandate: How can we allow people to work less and still meet their basic needs?

This goal of slowing down and spending less time at work — as radical as it may sound — was at the center of mainstream American political discourse for much of our history, considered by thinkers of all ideological stripes to be the natural endpoint of technological development. It was mostly forgotten here in the 1940s, strangely so, even as worker productivity increased dramatically.

But it’s worth remembering now that we understand the environmental consequences of our growth-based economic system. Our current approach isn’t good for the health of the planet and its creatures, and it’s not good for the happiness and productivity of overworked Americans, so perhaps it’s time to revisit this once-popular idea.

Or not. One gains money by work. Money isn’t everything, but money helps a lot. Money helps, for instance, things like cleaning up environmental problems. P.J. O’Rourke pointed out decades ago that environmental protection is a luxury good, something you get by having goods to begin with. Healthy, growing economies can pay for environmental care; non-growing economies — notably the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact before their collapse — can’t and don’t.

Regular readers can guess how I feel about this even before reading this blog. The theory here also may seem familiar to you. In contrast, the correct view is: Man is meant to work. Our problems today stem from people not working enough, or hard enough, or productively enough, not from working too much.