We celebrate Earth Day each year in April. Some observe a glass half empty, while others give thanks for a glass half full. Either way, we should consider the Earth each day of the year.

On Earth Day last week and every April, humanity contemplated needs in the context of supply, demand, fashion, ecology and stewardship. It should be an occasion to celebrate new and old on a planet that constantly supports population growth and expanding human innovation.

To celebrate the Earth in a positive context – rather than bemoaning glass-half-full manifestations of human consumption – consider Headwaters Center in Colorado’s world-famous Winter Park. As the center’s website declares, Headwaters stands as “Colorado’s first off-the-grid gathering place for celebration, recreation and education.”

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The center was supposed to celebrate Earth Day last week. Plans changed because the center had no power. An email by management explained the center’s batteries and backup generators no longer work. Solar panels generate electrons, but there is no way to store them. With no connection to the grid – assumed unnecessary thanks to trendier power – the center can’t host anything.

“Like all car batteries, they (the center’s backup batteries) fail to hold energy any longer after five years,” Headwaters Director Holli Riebel wrote.

Giant batteries, like all assortment of off-the-grid and “sustainable” energy products, stand to stabilize our lives. Each new energy source and electrified product gives reason to celebrate the potential of increased affordability, energy redundancy, national security through energy independence and economic vitality.

People who bemoan change, including constructive transitions to new and alternative power sources, jeopardize progress with irrational zero-sum thinking. Rather than appreciating solar and wind for expanding our options, they consider these additions an evil threat to oil, gas, power lines, pipelines and other traditional energy resources.

Acceptance of the new, they fear, requires death to the old.

Joining these right-leaning curmudgeons are overly enthusiastic advocates of solar, wind and battery power. They won’t be happy until society demonizes and abandons time-tested energy sources. For any idea to succeed, all others must die.

The zero-sum mindset, from any sociopolitical perspective, cannot comprehend the value of growth. It clings to disproven Malthusian ideology that says adding 1 million people to the Earth means diluting resources for billions of others. We cannot have winners without losers or survival without death.

This ill-conceived mindset infects much more than energy policy. On the extreme right are those who see each migrant to the United States taking a slice of pizza belonging to Americans. The fact one migrant can produce dozens or hundreds of pizzas each day, to benefit everyone, completely escapes them.

Instead of equation A: Migrant + 10² = 100; they compute equation B: Migrant + -10² = -100. If equation B were true, Americans would have starved long ago.

Left-leaning Malthusians blame couples with large families for creating excessive demand on limited resources. They don’t see that families with 10 children provide 10 additional taxpayers and workers to fund Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare and countless other forms of human activities that produce more than they consume. The latter explains why famine declines as reproduction grows.

The zero-sum worldview – i.e., use this electron not that one – cannot explain why eyeglasses sell at record rates after a century of cheap contact lenses. It cannot explain record-breaking sales of vinyl albums after the introduction of CDs and streaming audio.

It cannot explain the survival of retail stores during the era of overnight delivery options. Growth creates an abundance in supply, demand and reliability. Only winner-take-all, zero-sum mindsets cause scarcities – including the lack of power for an Earth Day party.

We cannot and should not view innovative goods, services and commodities as replacements of traditional assets. We must accept growth as God’s gift to human advancement. We must not disavow anything that provides more than it consumes. Like a diverse humanity, we should welcome the growing diversity of energy products.

Remember this after Colorado’s first “off-the-grid, sustainable” event center – using “the cleanest alternative energy sources” to showcase “energy of the future” – couldn’t have an Earth Day party. Energy of the future will benefit society, but not in the absence of power that works when the wind doesn’t blow, the sun doesn’t shine and batteries fail.

The Earth and the human mind provide everything we need, and then some. That’s a good reason to celebrate Earth Day all year long.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board