Conservatives on Earth Day may feel on the defensive.  This special day, coinciding with Lenin's birthday, is intended to be a festival day for the radical left, but it need not be so.  Perhaps it should be the day on which conservatives counterattack by proposing serious reforms which deflate leftist power and also make the air cleaner, the planet greener, and stuff like that.  How?  Here are "Five Ways to Save the Planet" which we can embrace:

Home-school.  About fifty million people attend public schools in America.  The vast majority of them are driven to school, drive to school themselves, or take school buses.  The huge institutions they inhabit for seven hours a day require air conditioning or heating, vast arrays of lights, water fountains, restrooms, cafeterias, and an assortment of other demands common to any bloated institution.  Most public schools have a whole bank of offices inhabited by "public school administration," each gobbling up electricity. 

Home-schools, by contrast, consume nothing at all that would not already be consumed.  The lighting, the air conditioning or heating, and the study areas are present whether the kids are being home-schooled or sitting bored stiff in some classroom.  Children who are home-schooled do not need to wait for a school bus or to get a parent to drive them to school.

If enough parents home-schooled their children, we would not need public schools any longer.  The facilities consumed by these statist empires could be turned into greenbelt parks or, perhaps, wilderness areas.  Energy usage in America would drop precipitously, and the burden on taxpayers would drop as well.

Preserve nuclear families.  Married couples with children require much less land, building materials, and energy than do divorced or single Americans with children.  The maxim "two can live as cheaply as one" is not precisely true, but it is very close to true to say that two living in a lifelong marriage consume about half as much energy as two adults living alone.

The impact of energy conservation is even greater when the couple have children.  A divorced couple with children, if the post-divorce situation is good, will mean significant visitation, which means the transporting of children to and from two homes.  None of this is necessary if the two parents live together in a happy marriage.

Support small businesses.  Unlike giant corporations or other employers, like government, small businesses have a bureaucracy as small as possible, and the operators are very conscious of cost-savings in areas like energy and transportation.  The owner will trim all possible fat, be it in business floorage space or in utility bills.

Also, small businesses are much more likely to be geographically close to home, reducing the time and energy of getting to work each day.  In fact, small businesses offer an even happier environmental picture when these businesses are home businesses.  Depending upon the nature of the business, there may be no additional utility costs and no additional land needed to operate.

Encourage sportsmen.  Few Americans are more serious and unselfish supporters of preserving the forests and rivers of America than hunters and fishermen.  A true (that is, not phony) love of the green woodlands, blue lakes, and clear skies of our nation motivates these men to take an interest in preserving the myriad species of animals and in maintaining a balance of animal populations which will sustain these species.

Often these outdoorsmen give money to help preserve water habitats or conduct safe burns of lands which are necessary for conservation.  Moreover, hunters across America have for years participated in "Hunters Against Hunger," which donates large amounts of natural meat, like venison, to homeless shelters, which also reduces the need for livestock in America.  Families that hunt and fish are also not sitting in the air-conditioned living room, watching television. 

Shrink government.  Think of the huge agencies, vast bureaucracies, and departments which seem immune to common sense and economics.  The sheer amount of paper generated by government is almost unfathomable, including such nonsense as the "required" form of the "Paperwork Reduction Act" for many programs. (One simply could not make that up.)

Most conservatives believe in self-government -- the regulation of human behavior by behaving morally and honestly and the control of dangerous excesses by the natural operation of the marketplace.  This is not what leftists believe.  They want a bureau and a bureaucrat for every real or imagined problem of life.  These folks and their offices gobble fossil fuels and fill the air with exhaust fumes.

Does the planet really need to be "saved"?  Air is cleaner, water purer, and trees more abundant now than fifty years ago.  But in case some environmentalist wacko gets in your face demanding that you help save the planet, ask him to support our conservative agenda for doing that -- and then see how serious the green mob really is.