Wednesday, November 29, 2006

An Inconvenient Truth

Dear Al Gore,

The truth, sir, is indeed inconvenient. I hate to write you like this, but I have an issue that I feel needs to be addressed. Now, dear Mr. Probably-Should-Have-Been-the-President-in-the-year-2000, I understand that you are a staunch opponent of global warming, the melting of the ice caps and the destruction of the environment in general. I also understand that you have both starred in a movie and written a book regarding your feelings on this issue. These are all issues that I too hold dear. In fact, I’ve spent many a day contemplating my roll in the constant destruction of the environment and developing schemes to cut down on waste in an effort to try and turn things around. Largely this is because I’m unemployed, but the point is the same.

Now, I’ll forgive for a moment the environmental damage done while printing the many copies of your book (trees, ink etc…) as well as the copies of your film (gelatin, plastic or whatever etc…). I’ll also forgive that both the books and film prints are delivered by large gas guzzling trucks in the middle of the night to my local bookstore and theater.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have not read your book nor seen your movie. You see I felt my money was better spent filling my gas tank. The price of gas isn’t quite what it used to be and neither is my paycheck – as mentioned earlier. I hope you can understand. But nonetheless I think I get the gist of it – consumerism and exorbitant amounts of waste are integral to global warming, and unless we start making changes we’re going to see a lot of neat storms like Katrina. The end of the world is, apparently, just around the corner and we’re all destined to either die from skin cancer or by drowning.

My opinion on these issues drastically changed this morning as I scraped a quarter inch of ice off my wife’s efficient Honda Civic. You see, dear sir, I live in the vicinity of Seattle, where just this week we’ve set a new record for “The Coldest Month on Record.” Which is awesome, but freezing. I believe we bottomed out at a nice thirteen degrees last evening, which led to car accidents and gobs of homeless people who were surprised to find themselves frozen to the sidewalk.

Thirteen degrees.

In Seattle. To refresh your memory, Seattle is in the Pacific Northwest and not in Alaska as the weather would have you believe.

In short, I feel genuinely ripped off by global warming and have yet to see any of the benefits of it. Benefits like warmth. Benefits like not freezing to the sidewalk. Benefits like getting to wear shorts and flip-flops year round.

I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,


A. Jonathan Cox

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