Just yesterday, it seemed that the Donk was having a collective fit of righteous terror, a full-on conniption at the realization that The Obama was polling evenly with John McCain. How could this be? Didn't America love the (Emily) Dickinsonian off-rhymey "McSame" jeer? Doesn't America hope for change? Oh that the day had perished wherein I was born, and the night which said, there is a man child conceived! It was the Media! It was unfair. His girlfriend gave up her toe!
Today, they are giddy as can be because Paris Hilton released a video in which she explains that John McCain is old and besides which if we just, like, drill for more oil and drive more efficient cars, then the "energy crisis" will be solved. Or, actually, and I quote:
Hilton basically endorsed a compromise proposal (I can't believe I wrote that sentence) of limited drilling as a bridge to a green energy future. That's not true; the meager take from coastal drilling is not nearly enough to build that bridge. But in the political context, both candidates are actually agreeing with this, as it's laid out in the bipartisan "Gang of Ten" plan on energy in the Senate. It's a true compromise, and it includes eliminating tax breaks for oil companies and funneling that money into alternative energy research.You've got to love the pivot: "That's not true . . . but in a political context." Politics, the Art of the Implausible!
In this scenario, the "price at the pump" will come down, and ten years later we'll all be flying around in personal electric hovercars, or some other Aspen Institute nonsense, living glorious Clintonian lives, gay-marrying in coastal enclaves, with the midwest coverted to a single giant windfarm and monorails as far as the eye can see. A real "energy plan" would involve, say, the reclamation of currently unworked, formerly arable land around population centers for a more localized agriculture in a near future when 1500-mile-per-bite transnational supply logistics will be unsustainable. It would involve bicycles. It would involve the radical revision of our lived communities and economic lives.
But in the meantime, 2 divisions to Afghanistan! Hi-ho Silver, away!
15 comments:
I'm calmer than you are.
Stop being such a ninny. Now stand back while I bootstrap myself to the moon.
Yes and I'm sure Paris Hilton put in a lot of overtime hours in the Senate committee meetings, hammering out the finer details of the "tax breaks for oil companies" and the "alternative energy research".
Democrats in places like the Daily Howler and so forth rightfully point out that Republicans spin any development whatsoever as a positive for their side. (e.g., violence in Iraq is down? The Surge is working! Violence in Iraq is up? They're just afraid The Surge will succeed!) But you won't get a Democrat to admit that their side does the same thing. Paris Hilton endorses McCain? Insult for McCain, watch that backlash! Paris Hilton endorses Obama? That's celebrity power!
...we'll all be flying around in personal electric hovercars, or some other Aspen Institute nonsense, living glorious Clintonian lives, gay-marrying in coastal enclaves, with the midwest coverted to a single giant windfarm and monorails as far as the eye can see.
There'll be spandex jackets
One for everyone.
A real "energy plan" would involve, say, the reclamation of currently unworked, formerly arable land around population centers for a more localized agriculture
not in my backyard!
It would involve bicycles.
oh jesus. just keep them out of the road while i'm driving to work.
It would involve the radical revision of our lived communities and economic lives.
this is why you would make a lousy candidate for president. come on, man, people don't want to hear that shit.
Great Lyle Lovett quote for a title. I'm still waiting for a politician to admit publicly that we're screwed when the oil runs out. Not a good way to get votes, I guess.
Dude, monorails AND reclaimed arable land look a lot like MY policy prescription. I'm like the Paris Hilton of dreamy, unproductive geeks!
(I'm still working on the oil prices thing--may need new physics for that one--but the solar-powered robot ponies will fit in nicely, I think.)
K
the reclamation of currently unworked, formerly arable land around population centers for a more localized agriculture in a near future when 1500-mile-per-bite transnational supply logistics will be unsustainable
YES PLEASE. ARRRGGH.
my favorite thing is an abandoned parking lot with weeds - tall weeds - poking through the cracks of the decaying and drying macadam. the weeds show us exactly where we are headed; that we should not panic, because someday this will all be gone.
environmentalists are such a confused lot; permanence and stasis is such a hoax. even toxins and pollutants get pushed around and degraded by other organisms. recovery is inevitable, so long as the sun is shining.
life is an infestation.
"It would involve bicycles."
And horses. Please don't forget horses.
"It'd just be me and Trigger, we'd go ridin' through them movies, and I'd buy a boat and off to sea we'd sail"
environmentalists are such a confused lot; permanence and stasis is such a hoax. even toxins and pollutants get pushed around and degraded by other organisms. recovery is inevitable, so long as the sun is shining.
Sure - for example, lead will eventually be metabolised by fungi back into the oxides from which it was originally refined. However, it can do quite a bit of damage beforehand, especially if a lump of it happens to pass through your brain at high speed.
Arguing that the massive degradation of our environment doesn't matter because it will all work out in the end is rather like arguing that being shot doesn't matter because we're all going to die sooner or later anyway. It's what happens between now and then that matters.
life is an infestation
If you really believe that, I would strongly advise suicide. Nobody's stopping you.
Well dunc, I don't think Mr. Fun is advocating euthenasia so much calling for a DNR order.
even if I were to see massive degradation, I would say that massive degradation is not permanent. either we can do something about it, if it bothers us so much, or we can let it go and allow for life on this planet to do what life does on this planet: thrive in a variety of conditions. hell, I think we should lighten up and recognize that environmental degradation, with respect to living arrangements, as we are discussing here, is a feature and not a bug. I think that hazardous waste is categorically different, but I would submit that there is even bacteria living in steam vents on Hawaii.
and anyway, massive (physical, not. . .emotive) degradation is happening in any ecosystem, even without human hands. life on this planet is already a bit suicidal; anyone with a garden will know that weeds, while being insufferable, are wasting their time around me! fucking kamikaze weeds, man. they just won't learn.
life is an infestation, and as far as I can tell an inevitability on this planet; we'll be just fine. sorry bubs.
Life still seems unique to earth, and a little drier, a little hotter, a little less atmosphere, and it's evidently a done deal. (Admittedly it's hard to generalize from these few data points.) Life, in a general sense, has managed to adapt to all of the chemical and geographic upheavals it's suffered (and wrought) so far, but even bacteria only go so deep. Life's more like a thin scuzz on a giant chunk of inanimate rock, and let's hope against any funny solar activity.
Even with the probable success of the bugs (going strong for three billion years now, and got the rest of us organisms beat in terms of numbers, diversity, and maybe even in biomass.), I'm partial to life as we know it, and don't even feel the need to apologize for my speciesist brand of environmentalism, nor even my multicellular bias. Really, I'm about preserving a biosphere that I can live in, which involves fucking it over somewhat less thoroughly than our fine species is doing now.
Is humanist environmentalism a paradox? Maybe.
I was just stunned that Paris said and did something that did not make me want to throttle her.
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