Clean-Up Time

As you watch a news update about the global climate summit in Copenhagen, where politicians debate if we should lower our carbon emissions by an eensy-weensy bit, or just a teeny-tiny bit, a neighbor walks up to your swimming pool and dumps a few gallons of some mysterious liquid into the water. Are you concerned?

I would hope so.

I know what you're thinking: "I don't even have a swimming pool." Fine. Poor example.

Let's try this one: I poured a bottle of unmarked pills into your well a few days ago. I found them in the back of a friend's medicine cabinet. The label was missing. They were pink and white.

I have no idea what the pills do, but I can't imagine they can be too harmful. A doctor prescribed them to someone, after all. They're meant to be ingested.

You've already had two or three glasses of water since then, with no problems so far. So what are you all worked up about?

What? You're calling the police? Pressing charges? Interesting.

Now ask yourself how you feel about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

No big deal? Carry on as normal?

Global warming skeptics insist there's no proof that man-made carbon emissions are causing any problems.

Whatever. What they don't say is that no one can prove our carbon emissions are NOT causing problems.

I assume you'd like to keep your drinking water the same. I vote we keep the atmosphere pretty much the same as when the first neanderthals started beating each other with mammoth tusks, or whatever they did.

Even if you think science hasn't proven anything about global warning, you also can't assume fundamentally changing the Earth's atmosphere is harmless.

The International Energy Agency, which is considered conservative in its carbon estimates, says we're on pace to more than double the CO₂ in the atmosphere this century. Meanwhile, the Earth has less than half the carbon-eating rain forest it had a couple hundred years ago.

So: my daughter could live to see a global temperature change severe enough to suck our soil dry, turn vast swaths of temperate zones into deserts, and melt the polar ice caps, which would put just about every lobster pound on the coast of Maine out of business. (Are you paying attention now, Baldacci?)

But even if you remain skeptical that an atmosphere absurdly thick with CO₂ is contributing to a serious climate change problem; even if you're not convinced there is a scientific consensus that man-made CO2 emissions are bad news, tell me what good could possibly come from futzing around with the atmosphere.

Seriously.

You wouldn't dump anything into your well if you didn't know exactly what the risks were. Why are we so quick cling to doubt when it comes to the air? When there are plenty of legitimate scientists shouting "Catastrophe!" and their opponents, mostly energy industry lackeys, can only muster, "maybe not."

Fine. Even though it's an absurd violation of everything we know about peer-reviewed science, I'll grant you your lack of consensus. "Maybe not" it is, then.

Big deal.

Let's clean up after ourselves, anyway.

And not like your nine-year-old cleans his room, by shoving everything under the bed and hoping it disappears into a convenient black hole. We actually have to get rid of our waste, and stop making so much of it to begin with.

It's the right thing to do.

Top Five Things That Prove America is the Greatest Nation in History

5.  Juice in a bag!

You know you live in an advanced society when liquid refreshment is widely available in bags. 

The bag is a container traditionally reserved for substances that don't leak, seep, drip, or permeate. But not in America, dammit. 

Our space-age metallic juice bags will not only wet your palate, but they'll still be piled up in landfills 1 million years from now, just to let future space alien archaeologists know how much ass we kicked.

Don't even start in about how difficult it is to stick that flimsy little straw into that little hole in the top without bending it all to hell. Your failures in manual dexterity need not reflect poorly on our genius scientific advances. 

Besides, your frustration may eventually force you to heave the bag of juice against a wall. Don't tell me it wouldn't feel satisfying.

4. Disability benefits!

According to the AFP news service, a woman in Quebec suffering from "crippling depression" recently lost her disability benefits when her insurance company discovered a photo of her on Facebook, relaxing at the beach, wearing a bikini and a smile. How typical of those commie canucks to yank this woman's livelihood just because she decided to share with friends the one rare moment of non-anguish, when she forced herself to smile for the camera on a doctor-ordered vacation. 

This would never happen in America. We call this behavior "living the American Dream." She can afford a beach vacation without having to work? No wonder she's smiling! Any loyal yankee would have to tip his hat to her, even an insurance agent.

3.  The Clean Air Act!

I recently read a book called "Lost on Planet China" by J. Maarten Troost, who pretended to be a real estate investor so he would be allowed into China to make fun of it. The primary target of his ridicule is the air, which, by his account, is about as fit for human lungs as used motor oil. The sun does not exist in much of China. The smog blots it out.  With four cities larger than New York and 16 larger than Los Angeles, it's easy to see why.

Leaving aside the fact that China is ruled by insecure and paranoid government officials representing a dysfunctional political ideal, the fact that we've managed to keep our air clear enough to see celestial bodies through it is reason enough to be thankful to live in the good ol' U.S.A.

2.  The best health care system in the world!

In Middleton, Nova Scotia, an 81-year-old man was having a heart attack in the parking lot of a hospital. His wife went in to get help, but they told her to call 911 or bring him in herself. 

After paramedics arrived and took her husband into the hospital, she was told she'd have to pay for the ambulance trip.

All this was reported in The Canadian Press last week, with no mention of a lawsuit. Obviously, they have no idea how to operate a health care system up there. Malpractice makes perfect, that's what I say.

1.  Bizarre scented candles!

I just discovered hotwicks.com, where you won't find the sissy traditional aromas like "French Vanilla" or "pumpkin spice." 

Instead, they specialize in unusual odors, including: "bacon," "beer," "mouthwash," "new car," "sawdust," "stripper," and "urinal cake."

Yes! I can finish my Christmas shopping early this year!

Thank you, America.