Treehumper

In the wake of the brutal murder of any sort of climate and energy legislation in Congress late in July, many environmentalists immediately turned their attention to a next step. If Congress can’t act this year (or any time, really), what should be done to start a substantial draw down on emissions and to stave off the most dire effects of global warming that threatens to spiral out of control?

There are plenty of ideas out there, like… you know what? Screw it. We as a species can’t handle this sort of deferred gratification, so why bother trying? I mean, whenever I read about those experiments with three-year-olds turning down the prospect of two cookies in fifteen minutes in order to eat one now, I immediately side with the kid. Who knows what will happen in 15 minutes? I might be hit by a bus in five. You just can’t tell. Give me the fucking cookie.

Similarly, who cares if the planet as we know it will disappear within the next decade or two, killing off countless innocent species and creating a global flow of refugees that will utterly destroy economies and create an even bigger divide between the haves and have-nots. Are there any climate refugees NOW? (Shut up, small town in Alaska. I don’t care about you.) Have sea levels risen and swallowed Bangladesh YET? No? Then yeah, we don’t need legislation or any other plan.

And you know what else? If China isn’t going to enact some strong climate rules, then why should we here in the US? They’ve got, like, 100 times as many people as we do, which totally means they emit 100 times as much carbon dioxide and junk. If waiting for them to act first means destroying the world and possibly turning our planet into another Venus within a few hundred years, then so be it. We had a good run, and we can all blame China as the temperature rises to 800 degrees.

So I’m done mourning the climate bill. This will probably all work itself out anyway. I hear Greenpeace is taking care of it.