Up Next: Exhalation Tax

If you drop in here from time to time, you may have noticed that I haven't posted much recently. Part of this has been a matter of time (my wife returned to work in the fall), part the normal lethargy or apathy or whatever it is that plagues us, but part of it is also that I sort of fell into a discussion group on economic and political matters with some old friends in Atlanta, one of whom has an architectural practice, another of whom recently reached the breaking point and quit his job as a quite successful institutional stock broker (I don't think he'll have to worry about money for a while), and the third of which is a recently retired engineering professor, who also holds a PhD in physics, and who is father to the first two.

My participation in these discussions, I realized this morning, has siphoned off whatever (admittedly meager) initiative I had for posting here. So, rather than redoubling my efforts, I've decided simply to post some of my emailed comments to them here. I'll no doubt alter them editorially here and there to protect anonymity or enhance clarity. I happened to fire off to them the following this morning:

Well, this should help, since, as we all know, we're in imminent danger of drowning in rising seas.

I think something along the following lines would cut through a lot of the bullshit on this issue. I'm not an expert on global warming, nor are 99.999999999999999999999% of the people who comment with such assurance on this issue, including more than a few scientists.

Let's put it this way, if Al Gore is right, and global warming, or if you prefer the more current phraseology "climate change" (since the data suggest that the climate may now be cooling) . . . anyway, if this phenomenon is a) the near apocalyptic threat that it is made out to be, and is b) man-made (or if you prefer, "human made," although "human" is actually an adjective), and is c) most specifically the result of economic activity, then what we should all be praying for is a) a global economic collapse that b) lasts as a long as possible, and is as severe as possible, and that c) ultimately results in a winnowing of the human infestation plaguing our ecosystem.

Are our prayers being answered?

In other words, I'm still waiting for some politician to point out the "inconvenient truth" that we're lucky to be undergoing the current economic crisis, that unemployment is now a good thing, widespread business failures are an even better thing, and that the outbreak of several desperate, genocidal, large-scale wars might be just what the planet ordered. Now that's a guy I could vote for, simply on the grounds that he'd have to have balls the size of two geographically correct globes.


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ps: I also bought a motor scooter recently, which has occupied my attention. See, I am trying to save the planet after all.