From the by M.D. Fletcher |
May 2010 |
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I've been told I should be concerned about my carbon footprint. Now, the first time I heard about my carbon footprint, I figured they were referring to my odor-eaters which, I'll have you know, are in as pristine a condition as one might expect, given their considerable work load. But no, they were evidently referring to my personal impact on the planet, which, up to that point, I pretty much figured was zero. I mean, I know I take up a lot of space, but my offensive personality sort of balances that out by effectively isolating me from most other people in socially interactive situations. Then I was told the problem was in my emissions. Well excuse me, but a lot of people have lactose difficulties and what's that got to do with my footprint, anyway? Obviously, I'm not a quick study. It turns out that my learned critics were talking about my disgustingly consumptive lifestyle. I apparently am guilty of turning on light bulbs powered by the devil fuel coal. I am equally guilty of driving an old Dodge pickup fueled by 86-octane gasoline, which by all modern measures, is a grand form of heresy. I wear boots made from the hides of bovine methane fountains and cotton skivvies, the cotton having been raised with soil-killing fertilizers and the skivvies having being made by slave labor in the back room of K-Mart. I read newspapers made from the rendered corpses of the noble pine tree and I work for an outfit that pickles and plants these stripped down natural wonders for the purpose of stringing ugly wires all across 7000 square miles of formerly immaculate terrain, all for the use and amusement of people just like me. I also exhale on a 24/7 basis and I don't plan on quitting anytime soon. I am just one, big, honking carbon footprint. My only comfort in my newly enlightened state of consciousness is the knowledge that my footprint is nothing compared to some others. |
F'instance: If you added up the square footage of every house, apartment, motel room, camper shell and tent I ever lived in, it wouldn't amount to the size of Al Gore's breakfast nook. Here's a guy whose monthly light bill is more than what's in my 401(k) and he's the big daddy rabbit behind the whole carbon footprint notion. If I'm the tiny kettle, he's the humungous pot. F'instance: My old Dodge may suck up a quart of gasoline to and from the golf course a couple of times a month, but that's a drop in the bucket compared to what in takes in av-gas to fuel up a 747 full of environmentalists on the way to Rio de Janeiro to debate climate change. My pickup might puff out some oily carbon monoxide chugging the way down the road in Luna County but at least I'm not doing it on a grand scale in a vapor trail at 37,000 feet over the Caribbean. F'instance: I'll admit I like cows. I like horses too, but cows taste better. And sure, your average cow may from time to time emit a bit of methane as the result of the inner workings of the best digestive system God ever created, but a cud-chewing cow lying in a tall grass pasture doing his or her thing methane-wise is a thing of unparalleled beauty. Compare that to the fact that 3 out of 4 of our young men and women are too fat to join the military, and maybe you'll begin to understand where the real methane problem lies. F'instance: The President just signed a so-called health care reform bill that weighs in at a super-sized 2000 pages. Since nobody in Congress understands what's in it, they've left it to the bureaucrats to figure out. For each page in the bill, the bureaucrats will create 100 pages of regulations. That's 200,000 pages right there for a single issue, not counting additions, deletions, corrections, addendums, indexes and disclaimers. All of a sudden my daily copy of the Wall Street Journal seems like a pretty lightweight burden on the environment. Now I feel so much better maybe I should treat myself to a vacation. I hear Iceland is beautiful. |
