Dancing Around the Coal Fires and French Cubes.
Al Gore and the planet. Up until last night I was one of those diehard activists that work "within" the system. In other words, at parties I attempted to convince like-minded people to accept, even more profoundly than they already had, the value of any number of progressive values. It's shooting fish in a barrel really; I only hang out with lefties.
Seen from a slightly different perspective, I've attempted to make people feel a little bad, a little "less than," if they were not as cynical about the present as I think cool people should be. After all, peopls should be idealistic about the possibility of the human future if our present leadership was eliminated, the ghettos were firebombed, and the bourgeousie finally grew so fat that they were no longer able to forage for food, viz. reach the phone to order pizza, and thus starved.
Obviously, if we were able to eliminate these groups, only the thin and cynical would be left to rule the world. Of course, that would be the end of the human race, since those of us that fit within that group seem to be unwilling to have enough children to reproduce our numbers.
But there'd be a lot of excellent microbrew on the way out.
The Day After Yesterday. Today, however, is a new day. I have seen an Inconvenient Truth. And I am struck by two things: first, at how frightening weather can really be; and second, at my reaction to the bad news. Gore is convincing. And it's a relief. Because the "debate" on global warming has been like a soccer game where the score is 154 to 1, but everyone is constantly talking about the "game," as though there is any wonder as to how it will turn out.
Gore presents the facts; they don't seem shrill. And you finally figure out where we are in history and how close the future is. He does a good job of presenting the immensity of weather. For example, apparently North America was once covered by a giant sheet of ice, and when that melted a huge lake formed. "Huge," as in almost-the-entire-continent huge, kept in by enormous ice mountain ranges, like dams. One day the ice levees broke. A gazillion gallons of cold fresh water poured out into the Atlantic.
The cold fresh water shut down the Gulf Stream. The result, Europe went back into an ice age, covered the whole continent with ice. And the craziest bit? The ice age may have occured in as little as a ten year period from the time the dam broke.
Okay, wow. But then I thought, "cool. "
Back when I thought this process (by that I mean global destruction) was going to take a long time, it seemed like the only responsible thing to do was to protect our children's inheritance, the seventh generation, etcetera, etcetera, etc. Committed to saving the planet, I support hybrids, complain bitterly about poor environmental policies, and generally think that I would do things differently from the "Administration" if cursed enough to rule.
But, I think I've changed my mind. I mean, come on, France could be an ice cube by 2016 if Greenland melts. And Greenland is getting sloshier by the day. Sure, how horrific. But HOW EXCITING! We could watch.
But then I thought....Oh no! This movie is self-fulflling prophecy: Al Gore has just informed our government that if we just keep having as much fun as we can, dancing around our coal fires, driving our ridiculously huge cars, and turning our forests into numbing expanses of horrendously ugly architecture, France will eventually turn into a giant ice chip. Problem solved.
Today's rule: try and visit Paris again within the next ten years.
Seen from a slightly different perspective, I've attempted to make people feel a little bad, a little "less than," if they were not as cynical about the present as I think cool people should be. After all, peopls should be idealistic about the possibility of the human future if our present leadership was eliminated, the ghettos were firebombed, and the bourgeousie finally grew so fat that they were no longer able to forage for food, viz. reach the phone to order pizza, and thus starved.
Obviously, if we were able to eliminate these groups, only the thin and cynical would be left to rule the world. Of course, that would be the end of the human race, since those of us that fit within that group seem to be unwilling to have enough children to reproduce our numbers.
But there'd be a lot of excellent microbrew on the way out.
The Day After Yesterday. Today, however, is a new day. I have seen an Inconvenient Truth. And I am struck by two things: first, at how frightening weather can really be; and second, at my reaction to the bad news. Gore is convincing. And it's a relief. Because the "debate" on global warming has been like a soccer game where the score is 154 to 1, but everyone is constantly talking about the "game," as though there is any wonder as to how it will turn out.
Gore presents the facts; they don't seem shrill. And you finally figure out where we are in history and how close the future is. He does a good job of presenting the immensity of weather. For example, apparently North America was once covered by a giant sheet of ice, and when that melted a huge lake formed. "Huge," as in almost-the-entire-continent huge, kept in by enormous ice mountain ranges, like dams. One day the ice levees broke. A gazillion gallons of cold fresh water poured out into the Atlantic.
The cold fresh water shut down the Gulf Stream. The result, Europe went back into an ice age, covered the whole continent with ice. And the craziest bit? The ice age may have occured in as little as a ten year period from the time the dam broke.
Okay, wow. But then I thought, "cool. "
Back when I thought this process (by that I mean global destruction) was going to take a long time, it seemed like the only responsible thing to do was to protect our children's inheritance, the seventh generation, etcetera, etcetera, etc. Committed to saving the planet, I support hybrids, complain bitterly about poor environmental policies, and generally think that I would do things differently from the "Administration" if cursed enough to rule.
But, I think I've changed my mind. I mean, come on, France could be an ice cube by 2016 if Greenland melts. And Greenland is getting sloshier by the day. Sure, how horrific. But HOW EXCITING! We could watch.
But then I thought....Oh no! This movie is self-fulflling prophecy: Al Gore has just informed our government that if we just keep having as much fun as we can, dancing around our coal fires, driving our ridiculously huge cars, and turning our forests into numbing expanses of horrendously ugly architecture, France will eventually turn into a giant ice chip. Problem solved.
Today's rule: try and visit Paris again within the next ten years.
posted by Michael at
7:25 PM
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