YOU’RE ADDICTED TO FOSSIL FUELS, YOU’RE JUST AFRAID TO SAY SO
It's time to concede that Americans fighting against climate change is like quitting smoking when you're an 83-year-old man who at age eleven snuck into his mother's purse and has smoked three packs a day ever since. Sure--you can take that 83-year-old man and use him to reenact that scene from A Clockwork Orange where Malcolm McDowell is strapped into the chair with clamps on his eyelids used to hold open wide his eyes to make him watch commercial after commercial produced by the truth dot org. You can fill that 83-year-old man with bottle after bottle of five-hour-energy to make sure he doesn't fall asleep while watching these supposedly life altering commercials, but that 83-year-old man is just not ever going to care. He will never reform. We as humanity are that 83-year-old man. Life has passed us by, and when it comes to the health of the planet, humanity no longer gives a fuck. Donald Trump, (as he is so eager to point out), does not represent Paris, he represents Pittsburgh which in return represents America, which in turn represents the world-- at least as far as America is concerned.
To put it another way, the United States, as far as world politics goes, is a teenager. And like most teenagers, has a strong aversion to authority. It doesn't matter how many times you tell that teenager to put out his cigarette, it's an act of rebellion-- like the United States rebelling against Great Britain. The problem is, when it comes to tipping points, time travel is everything. The United States is simultaneously the rebellious teenager and the doomed 83-year-old cigarette addicted emphysema having, cancerous old man on his deathbed. That dying 83-year-old man can try to warn his teenage self, but some teenagers are just too rebellious. The idea of living with tubes stuck up one's nose or having to survive through a breathing machine is an utterly foreign concept.
If you are a smoker and you're young, -- a teenager-- the prevailing thought is, "well we're all going to die someday--we might as well live each day like it was our last." And then you've got a long list of people in your mind to validate your case-- people who seemed more than healthy-- who woke up at 5 AM every day to jog 10 miles, drink a protein shake and still died young.
Kimbo Slice-- the UFC fighter, so strong and healthy, he could split your head in two just by thinking about it-- he was throwing kicks and punching faces and drinking protein shakes. But what kind of life would it be to train 24-seven just to die at age 42?
Michael Clarke Duncan--that dude from The Green Mile who was about 6 foot 20 and was built like an oak tree with biceps the size of most people's torsos-- pretty healthy looking guy-- But he died when he was 54.
That's a pretty long life, at least in the mind of a 15-year-old. My 15-year-old self wasn't worried about eating tofu and broccoli or studying for my SATs or doing push-ups. Teenage boys want to get laid. That means drinking, smoking and being unhealthy.
Drinking, smoking, fucking. Drinking, smoking, fucking. At least, that is the dream.
More like drinking, smoking, jerking. Drinking, smoking, jerking.
Me-- I spent most of my teenage years making art. I didn't even get my first pubic hair till I will I was fifteen. But this isn't about me, this is about the United States of America, teenager at heart!
The problem is-- that when it comes to the age of empires, the United States is just on the verge of adulthood-- but for one reason or another is emotionally stunted and we are permanently a nation of 15-year-olds, while having the health of a nation far exceeding our actual years.
When Michael E. Mann and a bunch of other climate scientists get together to come up with CO2 regulations for the U.S., the U.S. is in classic teenager mode.
CLIMATE SCIENTIST DAD: You've got to shape up your act and cut carbon emission or we're all going to die. The planet is literally doomed, and your sister and mother and everyone you know will live out their final hours in horrible agony, choking on toxic clouds, breathing through tubes and getting thermometers jammed up our collective ass. Is that what you want young man?
UNITED STATES: Fuck you dad!
CLIMATE SCIENTIST DAD: Climate change is real, son. You cannot speak to your father that way. You go to your room right now!
UNITED STATES: Fine. But just know that while climate change may be real, there is no proof that it is man-made! And you know what? I'll just sneak out the window and steal the car, and poke holes in the muffler and dump buckets of oil in Mom's flower garden. You can't stop me. I didn't ask to be born!
CLIMATE SCIENTIST DAD: You just try, Mister-- and see how far you get.
UNITED STATES: Oh, you know I will. I'd like to see you stop me, old man. I will destroy this planet and its entirety just to prove what an old useless asshole you are!
And then, the United States, (being the United States), takes a swing at the foreign scientist in the form of a drone strike, dealing a blow which only kills a dozen or so of people--not so much compared to the hundreds of thousands it has killed in the past-- but still a bruise to the authority that climate scientists have over this unruly teenager in the form of the United States government.
And as the United States predicted there's nothing that climate scientists or sane, rational people in the world can do about it, because you've got your lunatic teenage son piloting the ship, and he's too strong to wrench the keys from him out of his hands.
So, the United States drives to The Town Drunk's house, and says:
UNITED STATES: I'll cut you in on a couple of beers if you buy me an 18 pack of Bud Lights.
So— The United States gets pretty good and hammered and starts driving over mailboxes and throwing eggs at the cars of United Nations buildings and the cars of foreign ambassadors. While the U.S. is out getting drunk, he bombs a few other countries, and then gets in a fistfight with a family of raccoons. The raccoons have been feeding on a pool of radioactive water which has been poisoned by the waste from a ruptured pipeline approved by the United States. Those raccoons are mad as hell and have weird raccoon super powers. They tear into Uncle Sam's chest with their little raccoon claws and scratch him up pretty badly. But, even in his drunken state those radioactive raccoons are no match for the mighty United States. Drunken teenage U.S. comes home at about 4 AM stinking of warm Budweiser and radioactive raccoon urine and smashes his car through the bay window of the living room.
Climate Scientist Dad comes down the stairs and shouts:
CLIMATE SCIENTIST DAD: You are ruining your life, and the lives of everyone else on this planet. Do you realize if you keep up this behavior the polar caps will melt, sea levels will rise, and Mar a Lago will flood-- and you will have nowhere to tan yourself to a perfect orange color any longer.
UNITED STATES: I think I'm going to throw up.
CLIMATE SCIENTIST DAD: Year after year after year the global temperature record is continuously smashed to bits like a walrus belly-flopping on Antarctica is great ice sheets. The increase in floods, droughts and wildfires are linked directly to the greenhouse gases that we are pumping with reckless abandon and into the atmosphere.
UNITED STATES: C'mon Dad.
CLIMATE SCIENTIST DAD: During your campaign, you called global warming a hoax-- but just like the flashy rims and the fluorescent lights on your Toyota Camry, razzle-dazzle does not equate to substance. You may win over some people with smoke and mirrors, but if global temperatures keep rising, all we will have left is smoke and The Grim Reaper looking over your shoulder in the mirror.
And when finally the United States can listen no more, he will projectile vomit on the wall and fall to the floor.
And we should accept that the climate deniers in the White House will just keep doing it. Because they are not so much deniers of climate change-- but drunken profiteers, who prey on our addiction to fossil fuels. Whether they wake up in the morning as the snot-nosed teenager or the 83-year-old with emphysema who just can't put down the cigarettes, the result is the same. Either one of them will fistfight a radioactive family of raccoons to get their fix.
But how do you fight this kind of addiction which is so widespread and total— and the drug-dealers so moralless and corrupt?
As much as I spend a good amount of time researching green energies and hoping to one day build an effective magnet-powered engine myself, there are a multitude of excuses that I make for myself, and find I still rely on a fossil fueled automobile, making me no better than anyone flatly denying the problem.
If we can't build that green engine, who will?
It's time to stop thinking that the United States will ever do anything about it, Democrat or Republican. Put your money where your mouth is-- or that big orange baby will drive his car into your living room every chance he gets. He doesn't care if he has to live out the remainder of his miserable days hooked to a respirator. And every day you drive around in that gas-powered engine, remember that you are no better.
Accept it, and club a baby seal while you're at it. You and everyone else are an 83-year-old teenager with emphysema and cancer who refuses to quit smoking.
EmbraceDonaldTrump.com
@RodWebber