Published Jan 5, 2007, 6:00pm
There are those who will argue until they are blue in the face that “global warming” isn’t happening, abnormally warm weather and melting ice shelves notwithstanding. Face it, it’s happening, we’ve SUV’d our way into a much warmer world.
And you know what? I’m fine with it.
The East Coast of the U.S. assuming a 10-meter rise in the oceans, brought on by a partial melting of the polar ice caps. Sure, Delaware is mostly gone, but look hom much closer I am to the beach!
Used under the creative commons license
I hate snow and cold weather and would just as soon live surrounded my palm trees. Within a generation and maybe sooner, my 90 minutes drive to the beach will be down to 15 minutes, snow will be nothing more than a distant memory and I can enjoy a weekend a short drive away in the Delaware Keys.
And since I never drove an SUV, tried to live with some semblance of environmental thinking, driving small, low-polluting cars, I get all the benefits of Global Warming with none of the guilt. Millions may starve, millions may drown and people will literally lose trillions of dollars of property and in many cases, their livelihood. And very little of it will be my fault — in fact, I can take pride at having pointed all of this out. So while conservatives and Exxon-Mobil have to take the hit for being the bad guys, I get my beachside margueritas outdoors in January within a few minutes of my home.
So, go ahead, destroy the world. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. Go ahead and make it temporarily (in terms of the Earth’s lifespan) less inhabitable for humans and other current species. I live on high ground, so when the icecaps melt and the oceans rise 20 to 40 feet, it just means the beaches get closer to me. So, please, keep on driving that Hummer or Ford Exploder, while I tool around in my little Subaru.
Then, not only will I enjoy having palm trees in my yard and the possibility of wearing shorts to Dunkin Donuts in January, I can point at you and laugh and say, “boy, you really screwed the pooch on the global warming thing. How can you sleep, knowing how many million people died because you had to have an SUV with a hemi?” Even better, after the enormity of it all and you kill yourself and maybe your whole family in the kind of bloody mess the cable networks love, the lines will be shorter at Dunkin Donuts.
And maybe if things get too hot, we’ll have to drop a nuke on western China to bring on a nuclear winter to cool things down. Sure, a few million might die horrible deaths, but since no one here seemed to care about them when they made a nickel a day to make us cheaper shoes, it seems unlikely that anyone will be much bothered by their demise. Well, they’ll probably care, I guess.
But hey, it won’t be my guilt, I took the whole global warming thing seriously, but you laughed at me and called me a “kook.” Or, of course, my favorite, “a left-wing, California liberal.” It’s all good, though. I’ll hoist a couple in your name while you undergo electroshock therapy to overcome the guilt of being a mass murderer.
So I think those of us who saw it coming, warned about it and were laughed at derisively get to kick back, enjoy the warm weather and the sun and let you guys cope with it. We should hold a parade for Al Gore, if there’s enough dry, flat land left. When Florida is gone, when the Gulf coast, now in northern Mississippi and Arkansas, gets battered by one category five hurricane after another, we’ll pretend to be all serious and then suggest you send George W. Bush down to fix the problem, since he clung to the myth that there was no such thing as global warming. Of course, he also clings to the idea of creationism and that the Earth is only 5,000 years old.
I know we’re supposed to respect other people’s beliefs in America, but sometimes, people are just morons.
And in this case, not only are they morons, they’re perfect scapegoats. So, if you’re tired of preaching the case for global warming, move inland and upland, get some nice beachwear and just chill out.
Embrace global warming. Go surfing. Let the morons cope with the disaster and death.
Have a nice day.
