George Carlin was an inconvenient nudge. Never constrained by conventional wisdom and most often delightfully sane in a crazy world. We need a truthteller like George who died in 2008. Here is his take on the environment and the planet.
” The planet is just fine- the people are f*****.”
Image by Douglas Brown via Flickr
Justin keeps us level headed around the old Cantankerous Old Coots campfire. Sometimes when the old cantankerous spirit starts moving me it just carries me away like those rampaging mountain streams up the hill from the old homestead. Sometimes I just let the spirit take me on a wild detour. I go with the flow, get my mojo working and ride the rapids into a dead end. (That was every cliché I could remember but if I missed any, please leave a comment because in my book, you can never have enough cliches.) So, as Justin reminds me, I got carried away about sheep lately. It’s time to move on.
But that doesn’t mean you let them take charge. Like so many other uncontrollables today, sheep are both a problem and an opportunity. While sheep may not contribute to the dialogue here at Cantankerous Old Coots or anyplace else for that matter, if we intend for COC to dominate the blogosphere, we can’t do it without the support of sheep. There are just too many of them.
It’s a known fact that the population today is 95% sheep- probably more. You can’t have a successful blog if you bash 95% of your potential audience. But I can be dense. I was missing that point, being all engaged with my sheep fixation. Justin, however, was on top of the situation. He was watching our course while I scuttled the ship. Fortified from his early morning kettle bell meditation and smelling of baby powder, he stepped in to put things right .
“Get your mind back on track.” He signaled subtly. “Sheep are the bread and butter here at COC, stop beating them up and focus on wolves.”
I hate to admit Justin’s brilliance because there is always payback. He runs a tight ship. I may have to eat crow in the staff meetings and do menial tasks for the next month but it’s better than chasing sheep around the pasture. The truth is obvious. There is no future in sheep. They are either maddening or invisible. Neither is any fun even when you get to pick which you prefer. Justin counsels to pick invisible and I am forced to agree. (We’d ask Bob but he’s still looking for clean underwear.) So the consensus here at COC is that from now on sheep will be invisible. We know they are out there. We know that they constitute at least 95% of our potential audience. We know that if they do read COC, they won’t comment or fill out our surveys. We also know that even the most stubborn sheep will read COC from time to time and we are OK with that. We just aren’t going to tailor our communications to sheep.
Wolves are the new media darlings whether in Yellowstone Park or in the blogosphere. Wolves are restoring the ecosystems wherever they are re-introduced. I don’t doubt that a few wolves introduced into the right environment can solve all the world’s problems. Global warming- add wolves and make it better. Not enough jobs. Introduce wolf packs into the workplace to thin down the overpopulation. So if wolves are the future, COC is going to the wolves too. Are you coming along with us? We are safer in a crowd.
Can’t we all just get along?
The environment is a hot topic these days. Everybody worries about it. Is it changing? Is that change caused by man? What should we do? There aren’t any clear answers to any of those questions but there are opinionated people with a mission to save humanity or the Earth from a dire future and they are very busy bees. While I can be concerned about climate changes, I can’t understand where the idea that man can cause or ameliorate those changes comes from. Man doesn’t have an impressive track record. We know that in recent times, the Earth has experienced Ice Ages and that the climate has changed over recorded history in less dramatic ways. Nothing I study suggests that man had anything to do with climate change in history or that today is any different. Many people have developed correlation studies involving various components of the atmosphere and temperature but nothing so far suggests causation. If this has happened before and man wasn’t responsible, why should this time be any different?
As this Coot sees it, it’s all a big diversion and just one more way for progressives to justify creating a nosy and imperious government program to save us from ourselves. Each day we seem to get further and further entangled in a big government straight jacket. We pay for it and accept rules and guidelines that cost us money, limit our freedoms and purport to save the threatened enviroment. But has it made a difference? I say no it hasn’t. It has created a big diversion for people which keeps them from worrying about real life problems that they have the power to manage. People feel good but everything is worse.
Today, all fossil fuels are declared evil by devious and tortured logic that has been repeated so many times that everybody believes it. They have convinced us that somehow we can ‘save the planet’ if we can eliminate fossil fuels like oil and coal. This lunacy has given us we ethanol to replace oil. Now, corn which used to be used for food is diverted to become an energy source. Ethanol costs an arm and a leg, burns badly in engines and disrupts the economy but that doesn’t matter. When the govenement gets involved, economics becomes irrelevant because tax dollars are diverted to subsidize the cost. When did you tell the government to spend your tax dollars on boondoggles? No wonder taxes are so high. Nobody knows the real cost and everybody feels good. Still there are consequences.
And speaking about drought, heaven forbid that you take charge and create your own water supply from rain that falls on your property.
What were you thinking?
So what can you do? Only big goverement has enough money (yours) and authority (big regulations) to save the envorment. Isn’t there anything that a lone individual can do? Is there anyplace where one man can make a difference? Is there any hope for the individual in the new kinder gentler American where nobody is allowed to fail and everybody is prevented from succeeding? Is there anyplace left to matter?
I think I’ve found my mission. Anybody up for a hunt?
