"Every hero becomes a bore at last."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here’s the latest idiocy from the environmental trenches, this time the World Wildlife Fund for Nature. "Between now and 2050, the world’s energy needs are expected to double." Now, why is that? The WWF doesn’t bother with details, claiming instead: ".... technologies already available could be harnessed to produce enough sustainable energy to power the planet while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60-80%." (Sky News)

So – where is this going? Picture a world with 9 billion happy people, victorious in the battle to "save the planet," enjoying themselves on eco-tours, powered by new and emerging green technologies. This is the Green vision for tomorrow? Bah! Baloney that looks like a pork chop is still baloney.

Oddly enough, WWF fails to acknowledge that technology is also helping to expand the human population. They had no comment on this tid-bit: "Cancer is no longer the death sentence that it once was. Our most feared disease is turning into a condition that people live with, rather than die from, figures published yesterday show."

Meanwhile, pundits studying chimpanzee behavior have recently announced that, at least in some ways, our closest primate cousin is – bear with me here – smarter than people! At least where short term memory is on the table (or computer screen, as Fate would have it).

Try this at home: rig up your computer to display a random series of numerals, from 1-9. Set the software to flash the numbers for no more than one second a piece. Make sure the numbers appear within a white square. When the cycle has run, all numerals having been displayed, try and remember which number went in which square. Do this by typing your answers onto the screen (filling the squares).

Never mind – here’s what will happen: You’ll be able to correctly recall somewhere in the neighborhood of three numbers in their proper box. A chimpanzee, on the other hand, will nail them all. Here’s a pithy quote to ponder as you consider our species’ innate lack of processing power: "Chimpanzees are superior to humans in this task." (Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa, New York Times).

Hold the presses! "Environmental activists are building a replica of Noah’s Ark on Mount Air-of-Rats—where the biblical vessel is said to have crash landed after the Great Flood—in an appeal for action on global warming, Greenpiss said Wednesday." (Breitbart.com, with slight modifications)

Now if the Eco-Weenies could convince a few billion people to begin a hegira to the Floodship Enterprise, at least a big chunk of the population would be concentrated in one spot, where they could thin their ranks by basic primate aggression, thereby solving several problems in one fell swoop. Hand it to Greenpiss, nothing like simple-minded theatrics to get a laugh. Maybe PETA will join in, whisking millions of lab animals to the Ark, liberating the world of many problems associated with University mouse shit removal.

Human folly knows no bounds. We’d rather swallow Drano than admit to being collectively stoned on manufactured reality. "If Oprah said it, I believe it, and that’s the end of it." [Insert other sources of consensus here: The Pope, Buddha, Dr. House, John Lennon, Hillary, etc.]

Let’s hope the See-Error Klub saves the day before we have to change our implacable plans. Pass the technology, I need a fix! Of course, it’s all babble, swamp blog, chimp-speak. The Go-Monkeys cometh. Batten down the hatches!

The hysteria over global warming portends to unleash the greatest outpouring of human silliness in our lifetime. Follywood will soon figure out that our collective angst over melting glaciers can be capitalized into Urban Beach Movies, The Planet of the Hybrid-Apes, and Carzan (the Hydrogen Cell Hero).

Don’t forget Westerns, as most folks will soon live in deserts and need a dusty mythical father figure to relate to. High Noon will take on new and climatic dimensions. The Good, the Bad, and the Thirsty. Little Big Monkey.

But, not to worry: the Clintons, the vanguard of social development, have discovered a way out of the proverbial knot – property in the Dominican Republic! And I thought Dubai was the answer. Drop the shuffleboard sticks, it’s off to the Caribbean with a grocery bag full of greenbacks. Land ho! The Great Experiment in Democracy sinks as we sip Rum Punch on the deck, watching another tainted sunset splash across the rising sea. Ahoy!

[Did you know that May 4, 2007, was "Respect for Chickens Day"? How’s that for a non-sequitur moment? One good thing about being a writer is that you can interrupt yourself and make it seem like part of some ineffable flow. Which it is, in a Zen kind of Way. Stay with me, there’s more where this crud came from.]

Mad Magazine, that bastion of high jinx and packaged insanity, recently took the bait and featured global warming as a cover story. What more do we need to know than this: Britney Spears’ shaved head was a reaction to an increasingly warming planet! The poor mega-starlet simply needed a little air on that thick noggin of hers. Now if Paris Hilton would follow suit, we’d have a movement! I always did like cue ball headed women. THX-1138, where are you?

Not to be outdone in the weirdness category, Live Science.com announced that "The herpes family of viruses can have a surprising upside--it can protect against the bubonic plague and other bacterial contagions, at least in mice." Hot damn! Bring on the lab rats; we’re free of bubonic plague (at least those of us who survived the 1970s, only to discover that cocaine and beer weren’t the only insidious ingredients to an otherwise drab decade. Saturday Night Fever notwithstanding).

I’m wandering. This was supposed to be a crisp piece on the new wave of fear and loathing sweeping through our hearts like LSD flavored anti-freeze. Just when you thought it was safe to eat that hamburger (grass fed), along comes news that cows are major contributors to the globe’s greenhouse gasses.

We know this because animal rights activists recently dared Albert Gore to denounce his carnivorous diet. Why, you ask? In hopes of reducing cow farts and other airborne noxious toxins from entering the atmosphere (one of my favorite words, from the Greek, atmos and Indo-Euro sphaera – a wet ball). Think about that the next time you crave a Big Mac. Then ponder whether the fries are GMO. (Support Slow Foods: locally grown organics! Unless you’re in the market for primo Afghani hashish, in which case you’ll have to buy a few carbon credits to offset your evil Earth-trashing habits).

Here’s more bad news from the bottomless pit (the Internet, or the Associated Press; take your pick): "Ecotourism may be just as environmentally damaging as traditional travel because of the greenhouse gases vacationers help create when they journey to remote, pristine areas, industry experts warned Tuesday." Not to mention what lug-soled tourons do to "pristine areas" once they get there! I always had a problem with eco-tourism. The idea of a jet full of honkies blasting off for the last unspoiled wilderness for a peek at an endangered penguin makes me want to scratch my liver and sing, "Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed…"

But, if you’re hell bent to experience the last gasp of the lovely planet, Reuters says, "A remote chain of Arctic islands is advertising itself as a showcase of bad things to come from global warming. Visitors to Svalbard can see reindeer, seals or polar bears in the Arctic, where U.N. scientists say warming is happening twice as fast as on the rest of the planet in what may be a portent of changes further south. Local authorities said such visits are less environmentally harmful than Russian-led tours on nuclear ice-breakers or sky-diving trips over the North Pole."

The intrepid reader has probably gathered by now that every tornado comes with a silver lining (warning: that would be toxic lead). Global warming, herpes, Follywood, Britney Spears’ hairless pate, even the fact that monkeys are smarter than us – these things offer a wealth of hidden pleasures heretofore unrevealed to the average American. It’s all a matter of how you see the glass: Half empty or half full (caution: that water might be more toxic than the stuff in your car’s radiator).

But we have to ask ourselves a simple question about Climate Anxiety – "What’s the message here?" It’s about more of the same, business as usual, keeping the jig going unimpeded, hanging our collective hats on new technology, bailing ourselves out only to start the process again. Global Warming Hysteria isn’t about saving a planet; it’s about maintaining the Game in perpetuity. Which includes more of everything - people included. And that, friends and neighbors is bullshit in a bucket.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sticking with the Clintons, setting my sights on the Dominican Republic while the getting is good. Flip flops and a cooler full of suds (no aluminum!), a doobie to ease the pain of knowing that my fellow victims of global meltdown are sweating it out in the bug-infested hothouse north of the Rio Grande.

Then again, I heard Mad Magazine was looking for "a few suckers" to join its editorial staff. With the Presidential election looming, peopled by what might be the most idiotic slate of Homo erectus asphaltus to ever grace American politics, I might just send in my resume.

Salute!