Save the Planet!

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming out today. I know some of you think this is just a colossal waste of your time, but I assure you it is anything but. We are gathered here to discuss the vileness of humanity and innovation and mourn the loss of innocence. We are here to talk at great lengths about a problem that we have caused but have no chance of stopping.

Am I talking about the rampant spread of AIDS? Am I talking about the hundreds of thousands of murders that occur every year? Am I talking about terrorism or corrupt politicians? Could I have in mind the growing number of troubled, ignorant, destructive, and poorly-raised youth of our day? Might I be referring to a national media that distorts and perverts the truth on a daily basis and calls it “news”? Could I be pontificating about curling or baseball? Am I referencing the ingestion of okra?

Of course not; those are problems we can actually do something about! What I am talking about is something that will, without a doubt, result in the destruction of our planet within the next ten thousand years.

I’m talking about global warming.

While all of you have come to recognize that at the present our world is in fact warming, some of you still don’t believe that we humans are the vile wretches behind it. In your blind ignorance, you believe that somehow this warming is a natural occurrence just like hurricanes and tornados! You think that just because the earth was plunged into a frigid Ice Age, and then warmed up enough to emerge from that Ice Age prior to human industry, we aren’t responsible for the slight elevation in temperature now! You think that just because the hottest temperature ever recorded (136 degrees) took place in 1922, and in fact that some of the highest and longest hot spells occurred in the early 1900’s, that our current warming is caused by something besides humans!

To put all those faulty premises to rest, I will digress to some experts who will explain it much less clearly and use far bigger words in an attempt to intimidate and confuse you into agreement.

Now that I have effectively dealt with the evil opposition to our zealous and nearly-religious movement, let me remind you why we do believe humans are causing global warming.

First of all, any meteorologist worth anything says that global warming is caused by humans. That’s right ladies and gentlemen! The very same experts who are right about our day-to-day weather nearly 13% of the time say that global warming is a human issue. The very same people who predicted 35 hurricanes in one year with an actual turnout of 3 have officially decreed that man is at the heart of this warming of global proportions. The same useful faces that accurately project what will happen to the earth’s climate in the next month roughly 9% of the time now assure you that it is you who are the problem!

Other ambiguous experts have also agreed with the ‘man-is-at-fault’ declaration. Of course there are some “experts” who disagree with those experts, but those “experts” are obviously paid off because otherwise they would agree with the real pious experts.

Most importantly of course, is the endorsement from some of the greatest minds on the planet—Hollywood movie stars! Yes indeed! Did you know that geniuses like Leonardo DiCaprio, Laurie David, Brad Pitt, Alanis Morrissette and even Keanu Reeves all say that they (as humans) are responsible for global warming? Folks, these people aren’t just your average Joe’s. These aren’t your trashy ignorant slobs. Celebrities, are by divine decree, much more informed and intelligent than normal people. Look at how much money they have! Look at the fact that you can recognize their faces! These people’s opinion matters far more than yours! Think about it. Celebrities are idealists who play make-believe for a living…who can question their integrity or their competence? Sure, most of them live in the most polluted and smog-ridden places on the planet and own or use private jets (that, despite what some people say, are very fuel efficient) tour buses and big SUV’s, but that’s only because they’re trying to make a difference. Some of them even putt around in hybrid cars so that the wicked among us can burn even more fossil fuels. You might ask how that helps, and for the answer I would refer you back to the experts I mentioned above.

And lets not forget that this whole revelation is spearheaded by one of the most level-headed, intelligent, and respected politicians, our very own Al Gore! He helped produce a movie that proved without a doubt humanity’s guilt in this matter. And no, this was not just another “movie”…this was a documentary! Documentaries are, by nature, infallible and correct. That raw, grainy footage is proof positive of the validity of any subject addressed within its frames. If you don’t believe An Inconvenient Truth, then you probably don’t believe all the cold hard facts of Fahrenheit 911 either.

So what do we have? We have a ton of experts, a bunch of meteorologists, some credible politicians, and a veritable who’s-who list of celebrities who all say we humans have screwed our planet over.

Lets take a moment to digest this truth. Why? Because that’s all we can do about it. All we can do is think about how crappy we are and how destructive we’ve become. All we can do is travel around and talk about it, holding rallies to cry in unison, “We are Earth killers! We feel like crap! We wish we were crap so we could fertilize our precious planet instead of polluting it!”

Now I’m sure at this point, many of you are wondering what the point is then. I’m sure many more of you are asking “Why can’t we do anything?” The answer is as disturbing as it is revealing.

The first and biggest reason is that it is GLOBAL warming, not American warming. You’ve seen the news; the world hates America. We’re either being plotted against, being called ‘The Great Satan’, or we’re the target of fictitious (?) nuclear missiles. At the very least we are considered to be scum by the scum of other countries. So I ask you, if we can’t get any other nations to unite with us and say “No” to terrorism, how are we going to convince them to stop using fossil fuels?

Try going to Russia in the dead of winter and telling them to stop running their cars because it’s making the world hotter. …You’ll end up with every Russian in the Mother Land letting their Zaporozhets and Gazs run idle until their tanks are empty!

No, there is nothing short of a military take-over that would convince the other countries of the world to join us in what they might see as a foolish quest to save the world. And if America won’t even stop doing business with the sweatshops abroad, there’s no way in heck it’s going to do anything to stop this impending doom in other countries.

Another reason we can’t stop global warming is because the experts said we can’t. Fifteen years ago we were told that unless we did something drastic in the next ten years, the effect would be irreversible and the planet would be done for. A quick bit of math will reveal that those ten years of opportunity are long gone, leaving us with an irreversible problem. Now it’s true those experts might have been wrong or misinformed, but to allow for that then would be to allow for the fact that they are wrong or misinformed about this now. And that’s not going to fly. We have to desperately cling to our beliefs until irrefutable evidence proves us wrong—and hopefully by then enough time will have passed that everyone will forget what we said. Impossible? Not really. We’ll just get the media to pretend none of this happened and take liberties with the textbooks to rewrite history. Don’t worry. If we are wrong, our integrity will survive.

The last and final reason we can’t stop global warming is that it isn’t feasible. It was okay when we were saying that recycling could change the planet. Buying a more expensive, recycled version of whatever it is you normally bought was a practical way to help reduce pollution. But now we’ve upped the ante to a level that cannot be reached. Lets look at what it would take.

Basically, we need to eliminate planes, trains, and automobiles and revert back to the glory days of the horse-drawn carriage. Of course we need to make sure the greatly increased horse population doesn’t flatulate because flatulence releases methane, which causes global warming too.

Everyone who lives more than 50 miles from their job needs to move closer, despite the unaffordable housing costs. It’s not practical to ride a horse for 100 miles a day, and our friends at PETA would have a heart-attack.

Industries would have to shut down because travel by plane would be impossible to link distant businesses together. UPS and FedEx would be up a creek, as would any ocean-going vessel that doesn’t run on wind, coal or steam.

Everyone working for the gas companies, gas stations, car companies, car repair places, car rental companies, and insurance companies would have to sacrifice their jobs. Athletes could no longer travel to games, so either all athletes would have to live in one city or they would have to allow a month or so of caravan travel.

The alternative of course, would be to hike everyone’s taxes up to ridiculous heights to finance a mass-transit system that would breakdown half the time, allowing the governments to demand more money for repairs and upkeep. Not to mention that any mass transit system that could handle the sheer volume of everyone who formerly drove a car or rode a bus or took an airplane would be even more inefficient than the roadways we have now. …And of course, mass transit can’t go everywhere. You’d have to walk or drive your carriage to the store or the mall.

Why such extremes? Why can’t there be a happy medium? Whey can’t we just use hybrids? Why can’t we just cut back?

Haven’t you been listening?! Our planet is going to fry in three thousand years! If we just “cut back” we’re only prolonging the inevitable! The process is irreversible—we said it before and we’re sticking to our guns. We can’t stop global warming, we can only hope to contain it. If we “cut back”, we’ll buy ourselves another thousand years…big deal. That’s not good enough.

Besides, there is no magic number. It’s not like there’s a certain level of emissions we have to get to in order to save the world. “Everyone doing their part” doesn’t really work in a world where people take shortcuts, scam, lie, cheat and steal on a regular basis. Everyone doesn’t pay taxes, everyone doesn’t do an honest days work, everyone doesn’t abide by the law, everyone doesn’t want to put their trash and cigarette butts where they belong…so why the heck would anyone actually do their part to protect a planet that is going to be destroyed in a couple thousand years anyway?

We’ve done our best. We’ve spread the word like cancer and gotten lots of people worked up and distraught. People who hadn’t been able to find a purpose for their lives, or people who’s morality was too loose for any kind of organized religion now have hope. Now they can latch onto this movement and see themselves as doing something worthwhile. Now they can think of themselves as “good people” because they’re fighting for a noble cause.

We’ve outlined what needs to take place for any chance of success: eliminate anything driven by oil. Remove an entire industry and make unemployment and poverty skyrocket. Make daily life as inefficient as it was 100 years ago so that the temperatures will drop to the levels we had back then. …Apart from the frequent and violent rises in temperature that occurred back then.

To make it really work, we also need to unite the world under a Green Flag. Al Qaida and Kim Jung Ill will happily throw aside their differences with us and join hands as we sing an Alanis Morrissette ditty that decries the human race and calls for the rise of a glorious Stone Age. Now wouldn’t that be ironic!

I hope that you all can walk out of here with a sense of purpose. I hope you can leave here with an optimistic look at the future. I hope you live a life full of frustration because you can’t get people to make drastic lifestyle changes in order to avert a disaster that you say is irreversible anyway. I hope that you never face the fact that the cost-to-benefit ratio for this movement is at best uncertain. I hope you never find anything better to do with your life than to perpetually inject it with either the inconvenience of living up to your principles, or the hypocrisy of taking a plane to Hawaii and driving a gas-powered car to work.

I hope you never lose faith in the infallible wisdom of meteorologists and upstanding omnipotent celebrities. I hope you never question if everything you see on TV is the truth. –Always remember, if a person is on TV and/or they have a lot of money, they can’t be wrong.

I hope you never stop to think that this warming may die off on it’s own in a couple of years, or to question whether or not this has happened to the world on previous occasions. I hope you forget that weather is one of the most fickle and unpredictable forces on earth. I hope that you work your tail off to ensure a future that could quickly and easily be destroyed by a true act of man—nuclear war. I hope that you fight with all your might to stretch Earth’s lifespan out to a few days more than whatever it currently is. I hope you neglect issues that could actually have an impact now in favor of this one.

Global warming should be at the forefront of our thoughts and discussions. After all, even criminals can be environmentally conscious and no one who believes in it can ever be proven wrong. If the temperature decreases, it’s all because of us and our tireless efforts to inform people about how screwed we are. If the temperature increases, we can say “we told you so!” …and then die with everyone else.
The best problem is the one that has no hope of being solved, can’t really be proven to exist, and makes everyone feel good about simply talking about it. You might annoy your family and alienate your friends, but you can sleep easy at night knowing you’ve done everything you can do. You’ve got a Prius in your driveway and you whined about the problem to everyone you met.

All it takes is a little stupidity, a little futility, and a little insanity to make a movement like this work. …I say forget eliminating fossil fuel consumption—it’ll never happen. Forget recycling—it doesn’t do that much anyway. I say we go right to the source of this problem. I say we just start killing all the humans we come across! One less homo-sapien burning gas means one more precious year for our planet!

Without us, this world would be a better place to live!