Taking Care of Business...Every Day

There's a lot to love about the environment, mostly the fact that it's purty. There's also a lot to love about the environmental movement. I myself am writing this having just come from recycling four years worth of extra handouts that lay dormant in Mrs. Johnson's cupboard. Fie on your Cuban Missile Crisis worksheets, harpy! The earth shall rise again! That fact that I've been written up for my efforts (I didn't sign out in the proper fashion) means nothing to me. I just saved the planet. At least that's my excuse.

But my own efforts aside (I know, try your best to ignore my massive contributions), the environmental movement has never been stronger. (Except when the hippies got hold of it, and I mean c'mon, they were the original hippies. We have much to learn, we are but padawans.) The industrial hemp industry is growing by leaps and bounds worldwide, which is cool no matter what your position on pot is. Accept the fact that hemp makes a hardcore necklace and that it's really nice cloth and move on.

Environmental groups wield so much power it's not even funny. I'm confident that Toyota will slink off like a struck puppy after the media beating it's received at the hands of groups like National Environmental Trust. Y'see, Toyota has been opposing a higher fuel economy standard. "But wait," you say, "isn't Toyota that one company that makes that one thing that gets real good mileage?" It's called a Prius, Cletus, and yes, you're right. Bit of a double standard there.

It's not like it would be so difficult. Europe's cars routinely outperform ours. They've had much higher fuel efficiency rating for years. In fact, we have the worst fuel economy level in the world. Check out this Technicolor diagram I totally stole from the Christian Science Monitor.

Some of you are going to look at this picture and try to figure out how these Christians know the fuel economy levels as of 2016. Well that's why they're trend lines. If it makes you happy, God told them. Some others will demand to know why California got its own line, and that's easy. I can think of several reasons. One, it will likely break off into the sea any day now a la "End of Ze World"; two, they speak a foreign language out there known as Californian (or "mellow-speak"); three, they have the highest concentration of hippies outside of New England. (It's because we lost Greenwich Village to the gays.)

So this general trend is another thing that makes me happy. Remind me never to buy anything made in the U.S.A. to get around the highway. Strictly Japan and E.U. business for me.

Plus, I just found out that Shell, the same people that sold me gas twenty cents cheaper than those Exxon-Mobil jackasses across the street, are confident that they know how to power factories by coal in such a way that emissions remain low. They do it through a process of producing synthetic gas (or "syngas," a term coined by a man in Marketing who spent eight years in college to give things goofy names for a living), which is easier to make, cheaper in the not-so-long run, and remarkably easy to get rid of. Sounds great! In fact, it sounds a lot easier than recharging an mp3 player. I need a new converter.

See? I'm a happy man. ...And then I ruin my moment of triumph by convincing myself that there were no bad things that happened in the news lately. So I keep on reading and find out that oil, still the number one (by far) way to get around the country, just reached the record high price of $86 a barrel. Couple that with the fact that petroleum companies are also reporting record-breaking profits, and I feel like busting some heads. But that would make me an even worse Buddhist than I already am, so I don't.

But honestly, anybody want to do it instead? These people have taken greed to a level I've only ever encountered while reading old thirties comic books. The ones filled with mad scientists bent on destroying the world and ruling the ashes. The CEOs of these companies don't care what happens to the Earth, only what happens to their portfolio. It's absolutely disgusting that they can have such contempt for the planet they reside on. We don't get another one, you egotists, now stop your shenanigans. Shenanigans: Good when it's a Green Day album, lousy when it's a word I have to use in reference to "mature" adults.

Oh, and Arnold "Pumping Vetoes" Schwarzenramalamadingdegger decided he was going to go ahead and veto the Industrial Hemp Farming Act. Okay, can I just go ahead and ask: Is George Bush his hero? Is the Governator making his decisions based on what Georgie Porgie Pudding and Pie is doing? Vetoes of bills that would help people and that have tremendous bipartisan support. Hemp isn't pot, Arnie, but it looks like you already have brain damage.

So that makes me a mite annoyed, if I need to spell it out for you. But it just tells me that we can't slack off, even for an instant. Because the people that rule the world really don't care about what they're standing on. So we have to do it for them.

Samus out.

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