“It’s been a long, hard battle,” the environment said. “But this oil spill… man, that was just a masterstroke. I’ll give it to humanity: you guys sure know how to fight dirty.”

The move was met with joy in the coal, oil and gas industries. One spokesperson for Chevron said “Finally, that’s over! So, we’re good to go on the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, right? That’s on the table now?”

The environment said the oil spill in the Gulf was the felling blow, but cited a litany of other protracted battles that had taken too much of a toll for it to continue. “Global warming, deforestation, mass dolphin hunts in Japan… I mean, hydraulic fracturing! Where do you come up with these things?”

Environmental protection groups expressed their regret that their primary concern is packing it in. Mass layoffs happened quickly at the Sierra Club, NRDC and Environmental Defense Fund. President Obama signed an executive order renaming the Environmental Protection Agency the Commission to Plan the Funeral for the Environment.

The environment was congratulatory at the close of the press conference, saying that it had never come up against such an ingenious opponent.

“And now, I’ll just go away quietly. You can do what you want now; well, you already did that, but I won’t complain anymore.”

Krill are the small shrimp-like animals on which many whiles including blues and humpbacks feed. An incredibly important part of the ocean food chain, the Baleen Whale Legal Defense and Education Fund (slogan: “We Can Watch Ourselves, Thanks Very Much”) is starting a push to protect krill—until they can eat them, of course—and fight climate change, which could harm the krill habitat and food supply.

They acknowledged the campaign slogan’s relation to the ridiculous series of puns and rallying cries stemming from the original “drill baby drill.”

“The oil spill in the gulf brings to light the dangers the world’s oceans face from dependence on fossil fuels,” said the BWLDEF in a press release. “We whales really like krill. Stop killing them and junk. Krill baby krill!”

The BWLDEF was unavailable to comment for this article, because they are whales, live in the ocean, and can’t talk.

“Come on, do I look 40?” Earth Day said, sporting a haircut that inspired whispers of a midlife crisis. Earth Day  was—reportedly—started in 1970 by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord (heh) Nelson. This year, celebrations have been planned around the world for its 40th year, but Earth Day dismissed the idea as unnecessary and “simply the wrong year!”

World Environment Day, which has engaged in an understated but bitter rivalry with Earth Day since the late 1980s, laughed at Earth Day’s denial of the 40-year mark. “Come on,” it said. “I’m 38, and I know full well that I didn’t exist when Earth Day got going. So how can that slut claim to be 36? Does it think we’re retarded?”

When told of the comment, Earth Day said that no, it does not think we’re retarded. It offered no alternative explanation for the confusion, though. The 40th birthday celebrations are apparently moving forward in spite of Earth Day’s objections. According to an anonymous aide, Earth Day will undergo significant Botox procedures before the 22nd in an effort to “put its best face forward.”

These guys thinks it will help to pass a climate bill. These guys call those guys assholes and say the exact opposite. Reuters says we’ll have to wait to see if health care reform is successful until we know how it will affect the rest of the president’s agenda; of course, much of the bill doesn’t take effect until 2018 or something, so uh, thanks Reuters.

Some other newspaper points out that there are other things to deal with too, so climate might have to wait. Politico says something about poisoning a well, so can someone call the cops and make sure to watch them for a few days, maybe? Thanks.

Also, a recent compromise on offshore drilling that appears to have found its way into an upcoming draft of a climate bill has “frightened” some environmental groups. But further investigation revealed the frightened ones to be the Audubon Society and the Rainforest Alliance, and everyone knows those guys are pussies anyway. I think it dates back to when the Environmental Defense Fund sexually assaulted both of them at a particularly rowdy party somewhere near Dupont Circle.

Clearly, no one really has any idea what will happen with climate and energy legislation. But health care passed, and every news outlet in the country is required to try and connect it to the other thing that people think Congress should do. But we resist, and report fearlessly that yes, the passage of health care doesn’t mean shit for the climate bill.

“Big Thunder Mountain has all the necessary characteristics to safely store spent nuclear fuel for millennia,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “I mean, it has an old mining train already running through it! Do you know how many billions we spent on building a now-useless train through Yucca?”

At the announcement for the officially-titled Big Thunder Mountain Nuclear Goo Dumping Ground and Happy Place, Chu then introduced Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who revealed the other part of the site’s utility. “We are managing to combine solutions to two long-standing problems in this country: nuclear waste and the rising tide of obesity,” she said. “It is a proven scientific fact that only super fat people go to Disneyland, and having them ride through Big Thunder Mountain Nuclear Goo Dumping Ground and Happy Place will systematically start killing off a bunch of them. We will slowly lower our obesity rates at the same time as safely storing our nuclear waste for the foreseeable future.”

Environmental groups that had opposed the Yucca Mountain site hailed the move as well. A statement from the Sierra Club’s new executive director Michael Brune said “We love the idea of using Big Thunder Mountain as a nuclear waste repository. Disneyland is pretty much radioactive anyway. It’s just gross there.”

Good luck with that, Maldives.

An international purchase agreement revealed yesterday that the low-lying island nation of the Maldives has ordered an extremely large number of sandbags from multiple companies in the United States and Europe. A representative of the Maldives government responded to an e-mail question of what the bags are for as follows: “We are expecting a bit of flooding.”

Although it was not immediately clear precisely how many sandbags were ordered due to the complicated nature of the agreement and the number of companies involved, a representative of one such company in Texas said they alone had an order from the Maldives for a “shit-ton” of sandbags. It is unclear if that is an English shit-ton or a metric shit-ton, also spelled shytte-tonne.

With an average elevation of only six feet above sea level, the Maldives could be thinking of holding back rising sea levels on a nationwide scale. The country has 1,192 islands, so analysts say the sandbag idea is completely feasible.

A call placed to the government of Vanuatu, another low-lying island nation that could be threatened by sea level rise in the coming decades, revealed that the Maldives’ approach may be novel. “Wait, would that work?” said the Vanuatu representative before quickly hanging up.

Several months ago the Maldives held a parliament meeting under water in SCUBA gear to call attention to the country’s plight. The country’s vice president, Mohammad Waheed Hassan, said that the underwater meeting “sucked,” and he would rather “just sandbag the crap out of this place” than do that again.

In an effort to match President Obama’s show of bipartisanship when he spoke to and fielded questions from Republican House leaders on Friday, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R—Ken.) took a symbolic and apparently fatal approach.

“The President has put on a big show of going into a so-called ‘lions’ den’ in order to simply speak with some Republicans,” the senator said from the grounds of the Louisville Zoo in his home state. “Well, I’ll do him one better, because our party is firmly committed to doing right by the American people. I’ll go into a real lions’ den.”

With that, Sen. McConnell scaled the fence, threw a ladder toward the other side of the protective moat, and clambered his way into the lions’ area. He walked airily around the enclosure, but after stepping behind a stand of trees screams were soon heard. McConnell is now presumed eaten.

When reached for comment, the other Republican Kentucky senator Jim Bunning said he had encouraged McConnell’s act of courage but admitted it may have been shortsighted. “It was a great act by a great man,” Bunning said. “But I suppose we should have asked the zookeepers if those lions had been fed recently or something.”

Kentucky’s governor will appoint an interim senator until a time when an election can be held. Bunning dismissed the potential for an unexpected swing in parties like what recently happened in the Massachusetts election to replace Senator Kennedy. “C’mon, this is Kentucky,” he said. “Most people here don’t even know the word ‘Democrat.’”

Clearly, this isn't enough to actually do anything for the environment.

A new poll of more than 5,000 people from around the country found that only a majority actually care about protecting the environment. Without the required supermajority, though, it will be impossible to move forward on all planet-saving measures.

“It’s really a shame that we could only get 59 percent,” said Amy Wilson, of South Bend, Indiana. “That only represents, what, maybe 175 million people or something? Obviously with such a small amount of people who care about the environment it will be completely unreasonable to actually do things like stop emitting greenhouse gases or reduce the amounts of dangerous chemicals in plastic bottles.”

The rules requiring a supermajority of the country to care about something in order to actually do it are not found anywhere in the Constitution. Strangely, a poll from 2007 found that more than 85 percent of the country doesn’t know that and wouldn’t want to change the non-existent rules.

In a blog post on his popular polling and policy site fivethirtyeight.com, analyst Nate Silver wrote that the environment poll numbers “seem robust enough to be accurate. I ran a simulation 10,000 times and came out with a supermajority who wanted to save the world only 279 times, meaning there is a very high chance the numbers are right and we’re going to go ahead and kill off thousands of species of animals, raise sea levels until coastal areas are under water and acidify the oceans until they become all but uninhabitable.”

Tom Willoughby, of Houston, said he participated in the poll and voted against environmental action. “I’m glad the supermajority rules are in place,” he said. “Without them, we would get far too many things done. C’mon, just having more than half the country want something should never be enough to actually do it. Am I right?”

A sub-analysis of the poll results also found a surprising number of idiots in Massachusetts.

“Our ancient traditions are being threatened by the Cape Wind proposal,” said Wampanoag spokesperson Simon Culver. “It has been our right since the dawn of time to provide acres of slot machines along with low-limit table games, solid nightly entertainment and a delicious all-you-can eat casino buffet for only $12.95. By building these unsightly turbines only a few miles offshore, we can no longer greet the glorious sunrise from the tops of our money mountains. This is unacceptable.”

The Mashpee Wampanoag do not actually run a casino at this juncture. After formal recognition of their tribal status by the government in 2007, though, they have started the legal processes that will eventually lead to the non-existent Cape Wind turbines somehow being in the way of their ritual greeting of the sun. One tribe member who wished to remain anonymous said that he prefers things to be in the way of the sun anyway. “There’s enough alcoholism here that keeping the sun out of our eyes in the morning should be the greatest thing to ever happen to us. Other than that poker room they’re going to build. That will be sweet.”

Cape Wind proponents say the offshore wind turbines will be capable of providing about 75 percent of Cape Cod’s electricity demands, with basically zero greenhouse gas emissions. The project has been beset by problems from the beginning, though, with powerful enemies including the Kennedy family. The project seemed finally headed for approval, though, until the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoags filed their complaint involving their spiritual traditions.

“There are better ways to take on the challenges presented by oil dependence and global warming than Cape Wind,” said Culver, the Mashpee spokesperson. “And don’t forget: as soon as we get this casino built, we’ve got Ray Romano booked for two straight weeks of stand-up. Stay at the hotel and get discounted tickets!”

A scene on the imaginary planet known as Pandora from James Cameron's worldwide hit movie "Avatar."

James Cameron’s new hit Avatar is inspiring a new environmental interest group known as “The Avatarian Society” to seek out their own private Pandora. The group hopes to find a secret, unspoiled area so that they might live in the way of the Na’vi– the indigenous people who live harmoniously with nature in Cameron’s film.

Not since John Steinbeck wrote his famous work Of Mice and Men has there been so much enthusiasm among certain members of society “to live off the fat of the land.” But now a new elite group of environmentalists are pushing the stakes even higher.

“I guess I could say the movie made a big impression on me. Maybe the biggest impression of my life in fact,” said Brandon Murphy, a founding member of the Avatarian Society.

“It allowed me to wake up and see that we’re all just Avatars. This just isn’t real. America isn’t real– it’s all just an illusion. Some people say they like to go camping and hiking to escape reality. I say they’re escaping to reality. The Na’vi had it all right. They knew what was real and what wasn’t.”

Murphy, who lives in St. Louis, Missouri started the group along with several of his friends last month after seeing Avatar for his third time. He explained that the first two times he saw the movie it was in the standard two dimensional movie format. When he finally saw the movie as Cameron intended it to be seen in 3D, Murphy was transformed.

And he’s not alone. After several days of bombarding online social networking sites like Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook with their idea to start a new “hard-core environmental movement,” Murphy and his friends claim that interest skyrocketed.

“People want to go to Pandora. People need to go to Pandora. It’s who we are,” said Mr. Murphy’s girlfriend, Brenda Smith. Not everyone is so excited about the Avatarian Society though and some people say their goal of finding a secret spot on Earth and succeeding as a society is unrealistic.

“Every few decades or so these radical groups turn up and try some new kind of social experiment that is designed so that they will live with almost no environmental impact. Expectations are always high, and people tend to end up disappointed and quit when things don’t work out,” says Dr. Brian Barrow, a professor of sociology at Yale University who also teaches some conservation-themed courses in the university’s School of Forestry. Barrow recommends all young environmentalists read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance in addition to more popular works like Thoreau’s legendary Walden. Barrow explains that in Blithdale readers can learn from the mistakes made by the story’s characters who try to live unsuccessfully at a utopian commune-like farm.

Despite their critics, the members of the Avatarian Society aren’t alone in their love of Avatar’s themes. Pulitzer prize winning journalist John McQuaid wrote that Avatar’s story closely parallels what is happening with mountaintop removal. He said that Avatar is “no fantasy.”

When asked about his critics’ concerns, Mr.  Murphy shrugged and said, “There will always be people trying to shoot down good ideas. They’re scared. Scared of change. We will find our new home and we will be happy. I’m sorry it took us so long to need James Cameron to wake us up.”

Mr. Cameron was contacted for comment on this story, but did not respond.

Additional Reporting by Jack Metcalf