Chicken Little Went to Town-Part 2

During the Deluge According to Al Gore, the oceans will rise up and swamp the arid precincts of Kansas and Missouri. We'll be fishing for trout off ledges in the Rockies, and there will be beachfront property high in the Appalachian Mountains. Suntan enthusiasts will compete with moonshiners for the best spots to spread out.

On the other hand, everywhere will be heard a discouraging word. It will be too hot for the deer and the antelope to play - they'll go lie down in the shade somewhere. We won't be Home on the Range anymore; the range will be burned to a crispy cinder.

This is what Al has been saying. And who's to say he isn't right? Who can prove it? Sure, it's true that the 70's version of the story - global cooling - hasn't come to pass just yet. But so what? Just because the Earth First crowd and the UN Global Commissions for Getting People to Stop All This Exhaling have been wrong every other time doesn't mean they have it wrong again. Does it?

This isn't over, and it never will be. The globe will be cooling and warming and cooling again until the end of time, and nobody will ever be able to prove that it's not our fault.

Surely every blink of the human eye is a horrible affront to Nature. It must be so. What else are we to think, when there are surely too many of us for our own good; when our very existence fouls the land and the water, and every breath we exhale helps convert the oceans to a boiling, toxic stew? Or so say Chicken Little, and Henny Penny, and Cocky Locky, and Goosey Poosey. And Al.

Al's Global Scolding Tour is just the latest in a never-ending parade of schemes designed to get us all to wipe our feet before we go outside so we don't get Nature all dirty - or better yet, to take off our shoes so we stop scuffing up the planet.

From the pressing need for Zero Population Growth through The Late Great Planet Earth, from the murderous hole in the ozone layer to global cooling to global warming - right through to whatever comes next - stalwart nags like Al have been telling us all that WE are the problem for so long, we reflexively roll over and beg for forgiveness, and for further instruction on how to do better - how to leave a smaller, lighter 'footprint' upon the sad and angry face of the Earth.

The Earth hates us; we know that now, thanks to Al and his friends. Yes, fish befoul the water with their effluvium, while bears are rumored to do this or that in the woods and never give it a thought. But fish and bears are part of Nature, whereas we are... something else. Aren't we?

Besides, there's money in this thing. Companies like the ones Al is invested in can sell "carbon credits" the way the Vatican used to sell Papal indulgences, and who's the wiser? Saving the world while making a great, glittering pile of cash - what could be better than that?


------

When anyone is looking, Bailey Stone writes extensively about postcard printing, brochure printing, and the use of other printed materials for business promotion and sales. When no one is around he writes on a broad range of subjects. See his company's web site here: http://www.colorprintingcentral.com