Earth Day has been widely perceived as a time when people who care more about the Earth than about people gather to celebrate some pagan adoration of trees and birds while they denigrate American capitalism and the government they claim is subservient to it.

On the other hand, those of us who celebrate the day see it as a time to teach and learn, and be awash in optimism.

Carl Anthony, an African-American program officer for the Ford Foundation, said recently that the first Earth Day was the last day of the civil rights movement. He said a lot of people thought it might be easier to improve the physical environment than to change people’s hearts and minds about their fellow human beings.

But the deepest difficulty is the perception that environmentalists would be just as happy if people would only obliterate themselves and leave the Earth alone. Surely there is a trace of that in the movement, but generally people who care about the environment have motives centered on their own welfare and the welfare of family, friends, and colleagues.

Environmentalism at its best is hugely selfish. In my own environmental meditations, I have thoughts that usually start with shrimp, which I love, and my kids, whom I also love. The shrimp thoughts are about that delicate cauldron of life at the edge of the seas where much of the food chain begins to be visible and delicious to us. We environmentalists tend to know about that chain and all the connections that nurture our lives, including nurturing by beauty and by sound and smells—the visceral thrill of rain and lakes and snow and wind. Through that view, one cannot easily discern which of the species and actors in the world machine are pointless and unnecessary. One develops a nagging fear that some crucial link could be cut willy-nilly and the whole game would start crashing.

But the world isn’t easily brought to its knees. A vast number of species have gone extinct, and the Earth’s chemistry, temperature, solidity, and and other elements are always changing no matter what. Obviously, the fear should be that we humans will be harmed, might be brought to extinction, not the Earth. The Earth will be fine in the long term.

So it is our health, safety, and welfare we are rightly concerned about. If it takes a spotted owl to catch a rabid rat and that keeps us from being overrun by rabid rats, let’s take care of that owl. Every environmental discussion and action should be based on the health, safety, and welfare of people. Of course, it’s true that we would have to make advances in human trust and understanding for people who fear for their lives where snakes are concerned, for instance, to accept from some other human being the wisdom that the snake, too, is whittling down the world population of rabid rats.

Perhaps we should consider how the words "earth" and "world" differ in our minds. It seems, essentially, that the planet harboring life is Earth, and the world is the amalgam of life and Earth, which includes the intelligence and energy that all living beings possess.

If it had been called World Day from the beginning, it might have been dedicated not only to nature, but to peace, civil rights, and the whole human dilemma. But it probably wouldn’t have caught fire the way Earth Day did; in terms of strategy and mission, the correct branding message was chosen for the moment in which Earth Day was launched.

This suggests some consideration may be due about whether the time has come to think more about our world, while we’re celebrating Earth.