Yesterday, I was fuming that my son’s school participated in the abysmal #ClimateStrike.
Fortunately, student participation in it was optional, and my boy gave the event a hard pass. As a parent, I would prefer students learn actual science and mathematics. If teachers are going to pursue climate-related activities, instead of promoting protests, they should review such concepts as the Milankovitch Cycles, Maunder Minimums, and the geologic record of major extinction level events.
Another reason for my ire is that pushing this doom and gloom agenda creates needless fear and worry. How many students already have anxiety or depression due to the realities of their life circumstances, which is then made worse by the “climate crisis” drama?
Finally, promoting this nonsense instills a sense of arrogance and self-righteousness in those who have succumbed to the indoctrination. Do politicians really believe restricting straws, meat, and cars will significantly change the global temperature?
I am reminded of the late comedian and social critic George Carlin’s wonderful routine “Saving the Planet.” Carlin stresses the uselessness of “arrogant meddling” and the arrogance of “self-righteous environmentalists.”
The video is truly a palate cleanser if, like me, you need a break from #ClimateStrike, #ClimateCrisis, and #ClimateStupidity.
LANGUAGE WARNING
Perhaps my favorite moment is when Carlin goes into the subject of plastics. The comedian humorously ponders whether the reason for humans is that Earth wanted us to create plastic. Here’s a partial transcript:
“We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. “Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.” And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet. I’m tired of this shit. I’m tired of f-ing Earth Day. I’m tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is that there aren’t enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for Volvos.Besides, environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. Not in the abstract they don’t. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They’re worried that some day in the future they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn’t impress me.The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Maybe a little Styrofoam … The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we’re gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, ’cause that’s what it does. It’s a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, “Why are we here?”Plastic… asshole.”
As I watched the video, published in 2007 only a year before his death, I wondered how Carlin’s routine would be viewed a dozen years later. When he goes into the segment on man’s attempts to “save the planet” when the planet wipes out cities with volcanoes and earthquakes, I can’t help but think that there would be shouts to silence him today, for being insensitive to Pompeians, Mexicans, and Hawaiians who build next to volcanoes.
What we really need today is a movement to save comedy.
During this routine, Carlin mentioned that we can’t take care of each other much less the planet. This isn’t entirely true, though to actually clean the streets instead of virtue-signal over them at a banquet requires a quality many celebrities and politicians lack: Humility.
Perhaps the best example of a true climate warrior is citizen activist, Scott Presler (aka “The Persistence”). He is in Los Angeles today leading a clean-up that California’s state and local politicians have neglected to do.
Presler and his team of volunteers will have accomplished more in one afternoon to save the environment with their humility and service than any arrogant, self-righteous celebrity or political activist accomplishes in a lifetime.
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