Pitter Patter

Global Warming. Huhg. What is it good for? Nothing. Or is it Global Cooling? I get them mixed up. Maybe it's both. But that's bad too. I'm pleased to see that the world is coming around to my way of thinking. Change is bad. But "scientists" have come up with a sure-fire plan to save the world. Blast an A-bomb into the sun? No. Drill a hole into the fiery core of the orb? No. Irradiate the atmosphere with ionized particles? No. Manipulate the cosmological constant thereby decreasing the rate of entropy and in effect creating perpetual energy? No. Oh. It's so obvious. All of these other things are really good ideas, but the virtue of simplicity resides in one special solution, ever so dear to our hearts.

How do we save the planet? By not being on it. Scientists are calling for Westerns to have fewer children. Everyone knows that sex is dirty, and for all that the planet is, by definition, dirty, that's not the kind of dirt we're talking about. There's only one real problem with the world, and it's all these people polluting it. I don't mean the pollution they make. I mean the pollution they are. Language is a virus because humans are a virus. Nature is all for abortion, if it's of humans. Floods are just Mother Nature's way of changing diapers. Save the whales, kill the humans. Talk about a red-headed step-child. Nobody wants that dog. Bring back the dinosaurs. Oh, the dodos -- the poor innocent dodos.

Well, I ramble. The point is, why do you think homosexuality is on the rise? It's Mother Nature's effort at population control. Or God's. Same thing -- God, Goddess -- don't be such a sexist. So God used up all the floods, and the End by Fire is coming too soon -- albeit one small fraction of a degree per decade. I suppose he's regretting that old business about Sodom. Talk about your climate warming. What we need nowadays is more sodomy, not less. The perfect birth control method.

The fertility rate of Europe is 1.3 births per couple, or rather, per female. Replacement rate is 2.1. Europe is shrinking. Bet you didn't think a continent could shrink. Sort of an Atlantis thing going on there. Well, heat shrinks things, doesn't it? I washed a sweater once, and it came out as a mitten. Don't try to confuse me with your fancy objections -- I can't be fooled.

This shrinking population of Europe, although it is at catastrophically low levels, isn't low enough to save the planet, and please the scientists. Says bleeding-heart leftist weenie Prof John Guillebaud, "Climate change is now widely regarded as the biggest problem facing the planet. We're nearing the point of no return and people are feeling increasingly desperate and helpless. The answer lies in our own hands … We have to recognize that the biggest cause of climate change is climate changers — in other words, human beings..."

Hm. We're nearing the point of no return. It seems there are several points of no return. That of the anti-human environmentalist bleeders, and that of the anti-environmentalist human breeders. What are we saving the planet for? The children that we're not supposed to be having?

If the planet warms up, what will happen? Farmland, true, will become desert -- but tundra will become farmland. Vineyards will be found on mountainsides rather than hillsides. Populations will shift to higher or more polar climes. You'll have to pardon me, but I just don't see a problem. Oh, short term problems, sure. But long range? The climate has changed before, you know.

Mark Steyn: "Having fewer British or Spanish babies will do nothing for the polar bear on the ice floes posing for Al Gore's next documentary. But how many British and Spanish babies are born right now — this year and next year — will certainly have an impact on what Britain and Spain are like in the year 2050. These men of "science" have not called on Niger or Somalia or Afghanistan or Yemen — where women have seven or eight babies — to have one or even six less. Presumably the Optimum Population Trust (a magnificently totalitarian-lite moniker, by the way) feels the average Somali or Afghan has a more eco-friendly carbon footprint, and thus a world with fewer English and more Yemeni will be a more 'sustainable and habitable planet for our children and grandchildren.' ...Maybe the world that comes after western civilization will be more 'sustainable' but I doubt it will be more 'habitable.'"

Here's the real point. Yemenis may currently have as pitter-pattering a dainty little carbon footprint as the countless toddlers they are endlessly producing. Europeans (that's us, by culture if not by descent) may clomp around the world with our Godzilla-like carbon feet, stomping out tiny little Japanese model cities and ecosystems and endangered species. But when we go down into the self-imposed extinction of non-sustainable infertility, what will rise to take our place? Every ecological niche has a species to fill it. Something will adapt to take our place. What will that something be? We need not look to mutations and hopeful monsters to find the answer. We need only look southward, to the fabled evolutionary tidal pools of Yemen.

When the First World ties its last tube and savors the delicate bouquet of its last homosexual intercourse, the Third World, as much as it can, will become the First. To be sure of this we have only to consider India, or China, or Mexico, or any of the other industrializing nations. China has not just a larger carbon footprint than we do, now -- each of its one point three two one eight five one eight eight eight billion citizens would love to tool around in an SUV.

Populations level off. Usually it's disease that does it. Sometimes war. Sometimes infanticide. Less frequently it's the infertility that comes with decadence. (Really, it does.) It may be a common-sense homeostasis, or it may be the necessary response to limited resources. When food becomes more plentiful, populations grow. Consult Malthus. It's alimentary, my dear Watson and Crick. So, no, I'm not really concerned about the doomsday scenarios of the Chicken Little Leftists. We've been through it before. First, it's not a problem. Second, it's a problem that we've faced before. Third, it's not a problem.

All this was rather the point of that odd little joke I just played on you, about the Superiority of my Race. It's people that are important. Yes, save the planet. Save it for ourselves. I won't say more people is better. I will say fewer people is not necessarily better. Before we call for our own extinction, let's find a way to make the desert bloom. It is permissible to alter the environment. We know this, because nature does it all the time. Some species will adapt to fill it. Why not have that be us? The spiders and toads that live under the rocks can adapt too. That's how they got there in the first place. After all, the great law, the First Commandment of the Envirotheists is, The fittest will survive. Let this be a point of agreement. But for the fittest to survive, they have to breed.

Dang these confounded inconsistencies. Let's just ignore them. Wanna have gay sex? You get started -- I'll be over as quick as I can. What was your address again? No, really -- it'll be fine. The Planet wants us to.


J