Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.

Gary Snyder

Greenpeace, bastion of eco-doogoodism and progressive pontification, has become the loudest voice in a babbling chorus in favor of "wind power." Of course, wind power has been an integral factor in human energy production since before the word energy was coined. My personal hero, Don Quixote, even saw fit to engage in ferocious battle with a windmill several hundred years ago. Delusional? Perhaps. But let’s fast forward to the lovely present and see if the ole dude was as crazy as he’s pictured to be.

To begin, let’s be honest and get to the point: The world doesn’t need more energy; what the world needs is less people. With that said, the debate over whether to stick a bunch a whirling fans off-shore of Cape Cod is seen for what it is: An idiotic fool’s errand with the potential to retard human cultural evolution even further into retro-grade than is already underway. If that’s possible.

Wind, oil, coal, dung – it’s all the same when the BTUs hit the proverbial fan. The fact that one emits less sulfur is important; but, it’s all a case of semantics until we seriously question why we’re barreling down Population Highway with nary a thought to seat belts, or brakes. Obviously, the cleaner the energy the better. But at what point do we realize that an abundance of cheap energy, even the squeaky clean variety, might be the nail in the coffin of America’s last unfouled open spaces? Ditto for the rest of the planet’s wildlands. If you want to see what a 28 million square foot Wal-Mart looks like, just give the Chinese an abundant source of cheap energy. Green or otherwise.

America’s suburbs are, in many ways, a by-product of cheap gas. Sprawl, one of the most devastating human past-times, is what happens when the Jones’ are offered a big engine, cheap Unleaded, and plenty of asphalt to play on. You won’t hear this kind of talk at your local Zoning Board meeting. Because to admit that we’ve made a historic mess out of America is to also confess we willingly encouraged our own demise simply in the name of greed, selfishness, and well ….. greed and selfishness is enough. As one of my erudite friends aptly puts it, America has become a land of MUFFIES – "Me first; fuck you!"

The idea that Americans have a right to be naive jerks may exist; but not without an equal responsibility to take care of our own bullshit. The game simply isn’t designed to accommodate endless expansion. And that includes population. If we want to live in a LaLa Land of plasticity, fine: Determine the carrying capacity of our ecosystems to handle our behavior, and keep the population within those means. Welcome to Denver, Colorado: Population 20,000! Ahoy!

Wind power, ethanol, bio-diesel, and hybrid engines all aim at the similar target of keeping the game going a little while longer, in hopes that the Big Fix appears before the brown-outs get annoying. It makes sense until you stop and think: Why play the game at all?

If you ask that question where I live, the answer will echo from the nearest pulpit – "God said to go forth and multiply." Getting around the obvious pitfalls of quoting God, you have to wonder if the Boombox in the Sky actually meant for us to multiply until we screw up every corner of our blue green planet. Let’s hope not. Why create a magnificent work of art (Earth) and set a bunch of inbred primates loose with the admonition to reproduce until further notice? That kind of idea could only be hatched in the sordid minds of bureaucrats and city planners - warning enough for sane folks like us.

Homo erectus asphaltus has a unique ability to see only what suits us at the moment. The fact that our present actions invariably lead to widespread suffering and grief has become an abstract concept best left for later. And there’s always a "later" where the House of Cards is concerned. If you want to see how the game ends, just drop in for a visit at your local heroin detox center. When our beloved president, Monsieur Bush, exclaimed that Americans are "addicted to oil," he wasn’t kidding. It’s refreshing to know he can still make a coherent sentence.

But it’s not oil Americans are addicted to, it’s energy. We’re junkies for coal, hydro-power, methane, ethanol, solar, you name it. And you know you’re in trouble when one of the founders of Greenpeace is now a shill for the nuclear industry. Not that nukes are inherently more evil than petro-slime; but it’s the same old song & dance: More juice for an ever-expanding global economy. Which, in many ways, is a startling parallel to cancer: Growth for the sake of growth.

The old saw about the Emperor being naked may be the most lucid teaching ever articulated. Except we need to be clear as to who, exactly, the Emperor is. Goofs like George Bush might deserve our ridicule; but our man in the White House isn’t the real culprit. We are. The naked Emperor is riding around in gas guzzling monster cars, demanding cheaper gas while feeding his face on transfats and assorted chemical additives. He’s ensconced as the local preacher, the TV repair man, the bank teller, and the smiling undertaker. (Not to suggest that the Emperor is of any particular gender, mind you.)

We want it all NOW, by God, and nobody’s gonna stand in the way of progress. Not even Jesus, if it comes to that. We’re whores for juice. That’s what being addicted is all about: Pimping for the juice, whatever the flavor de jour. Today oil, tomorrow (fill in the blank). It doesn’t matter how clean our juice is, if the net result of our addiction is an endless sprawl across the landscape, ravaging the matrix of biotic communities that required several thousand years to evolve. The science fiction of yesterday is beginning to look pretty real: Blade Runner meets THX-1138. Where’s George Lucas when you need him?

So when I receive e-mails advocating we all become vegetarians to retard global warming, I can’t help but laugh at the futility of living in such a fantasy. Vegetarians may indeed be less consumptive in terms of energy efficiency quotas, but 6.5 billion vegetarians is still a melt-down waiting to happen. Factor in human population projections for 2050, and you’re looking at a hell of a lot of vegetarians sitting around the video game eating Soylent Green. Oh boy, what a life!

The answer is so simple it’s impossible to see, at least if your head is stuck beneath the sand like an ostrich. And that answer is to begin reducing our numbers. If the Pope doesn’t like it, tell him to stuff it where the incense doesn’t shine. Ditto for mullahs, social engineers, Chamber of Commerce flacks, and the Greater Home Builders of the Universe. We’ve listened to those characters, and their shtick has led us into the mess we’re in now. As my old Uncle Elmo used to say: If your strategy ain’t working, get a new one.

If the words birth control gives you a problem, we can refer to the road back to sanity as "family planning." Whatever. The bottom line is that we either reduce our population or end up living like termites, relying on increasingly restrictive top-down laws to keep us marching ahead into the sizzling brilliance of growth&progress. Green energy notwithstanding.

This just in: "Every American taxpayer would get a $100 rebate check to offset the pain of higher pump prices for gasoline, under an amendment Senate Republicans hope to bring to a vote Thursday." [CNN, April 26, 2006]

We’re talking mass insanity here, collective myopia, group-think, and obsessive compulsive neurosis on a scale unseen outside Disney World during a 2-for-1 Family Discount Weekend. These are desperate times, friends and neighbors, and when the bell tolls it won’t be anything like the Norman Rockwell America we’ve been conned into believing is the Shining City on the Hill.

Alas, so many words, so little ink. Let’s leave it like this: Smart people know that endless (bulk) growth is akin to eating bacon at every meal. Sooner or later you end up on the operating table. And when you do, all the bitching in the world is just hot air. You ate the bacon, you shot the dope, you spent your savings – karma – simple as that. Demanding cheap energy is like demanding cheap heroin: Cold turkey is always just a shot away. And cold turkey sucks. Bad.

If it’s a nice planet you want, brimming with fish, clear skies, healthy forests, elbow room, and a smattering of civilization, simply reduce the human birth rate. It doesn’t have to be a train wreck; take it slow, ease into it. Offer incentives. Muzzle the Pope. Try it, you’ll like it.

Salut!