As Hallmark holidays go, Earth Day is fairly bottom of the barrel. Do you even know when it is? And even if you’re a helpless tree-hugger, did you bother to celebrate? What present did you give to your great, blue mother? If you have yet to make a decision, fear not. Common etiquette states you have at least six months to give this magnificent bitch that unique gift she truly deserves. And we here in the Ideas Bureau at Jose Nation are here to help you become the best tenant on the global block.
I know what you think you should do: Green up. Recycle. Take the Hummer to the crusher and buy the Prius. Max out on mesh grocery bags. Purchase corporate carbon credits and grandly scatter them into the streets for the squealing poor to catch with filthy hands and elated, wet eyes. Do all the things that our friendly celebrity monarchy tells us we must do in order to sleep soundly this evening.
But is all this "do-gooder" status maintenance really in the best interest of our home planet? Many would argue that the solution isn’t as simple as a couple of million people making a change in their “carbon footprint.” Even if we here in America started to give a shit about climate change and greenhouse gasses as early as tomorrow—and we won’t, check out this recent article from Time.com—we would have little effect on the actions of developing nations like China and India, neither of whom give the slightest crap about what you or I think regarding anything. But even setting this “stinkin’ thinkin’” aside, read this blurb by noted top climate scientist Susan Solomon from a 2009 article on climate change on the NPR website:
People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years.
She goes on to say that eventually, even if we stop emitting cold turkey, all of the heat and carbon dioxide that has been recently soaked-up by the earth’s oceans will be expelled back into the atmosphere over the course of hundreds of years. Nothing can be effectively changed until we shift away from fossil-fuel based energy completely, and that just costs too much money, people. It takes limitless ingenuity that the oil companies would do anything to prevent. And it would mean making too many sacrifices. What would we store our food in? Make toys out of? How do we soak-up baby urine? What would we make our dance clothing from? How would we make our bicycle helmets? What would we insulate our super-efficient households with? How do we keep the lights on? Or the refrigerators? Do you like elastic? What else would hold up your undergarments? From what would you make cell phones? Carpet? Buckets? Remember, we aren’t talking about the fear of running out of oil—if that was it, we could very easily use those oil-shitting organisms that Craig Venter is building (click here to read about it)—we are talking about the temperature of the earth. And to halt the warm-up, it’s so complicated as to be impossible.
And that isn’t really going to help mother earth. If it isn't global warming, it's nuclear destruction. And if not nuclear destruction, it's cutting down the rain forests. If not the rain forests, it's Sarah Palin, or lap dogs, or krokodil, or some other workaday nightmare thought up by insanely bored human beings. I say that this task of truly doing the earth a solid is really much simpler than we had previously supposed.
One could argue that humans are the worst thing to happen to this planet since the surface cooled. It won’t be healed until we disappear entirely, and the sooner the better. Rip the Band-Aid off, right? Global warming isn’t killing the planet, it’s killing HUMANS (and leading up to the release of tons and tons of methane gas into the atmosphere, where it will wait for ignition by lightning and then explode like hundreds of nuclear bombs) and the faster we’re gone, the faster the earth can get on with the methodical task of cleaning up after us.
[youtube video=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxKYfTvZFb8&start=110]
If you're into self-flagellation, consider that when humans go poof, the earth can purge itself of all the vermin that live off of our coattails: the rats, cockroaches, and head lice will be in serious trouble. Methane-farting cattle will pray for the return of their evil masters once the wolf and lion populations explode and the hapless cows are suddenly faced with being regularly pulled horrifyingly to the ground and eaten alive by seriously scary monsters. A bolt to the head doesn't seem so bad now, does it, Bessie?
So lighten up, America! Just keep doing what you’re doing! Buy those SUVs! Eat thousands upon thousands of pounds of red meat! Rape the ocean of every last fish! Spray your deodorant in the air like ya just don’t care! If we keep it up, we can really go out in style and turn the whole planet into something magical and tropical for ourselves and for our children, and maybe even our children’s children, and then after that, does anyone really care that much?
I hope you can grasp what I’m saying here. Everyday a beach day! Can you imagine? All we have to do is give into our petty desires even more than we already do, and we can have a goddamn paradise right in our own backyards! Fuck you, American Airlines! I can taste the pina coladas and the margaritas right now. And even if there isn’t much to look at under our new turquoise shores, we’ll be too freaking high to care because the coming global nightmare is going to make weed even better than it already is. Win upon win upon win.
Let’s review:
- We can’t stop global warming
- The sooner we’re gone, the faster the earth can get back to normal
- Northern tropics equals fewer plane tickets to purchase
- Stronger weed
The best gift we can give the earth is to die, so let’s get it over with and go out with a bang.
The end.
