Guest Voice: Global Starving

Is the battle against global warming having a consquence? San Francisco newspaper columnist Allan Goldstein thinks it does and explains why in this Guest Voice post. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reprsent the opinion of TMV or its writers.

GLOBAL STARVING

by Allan Goldstein

I’ve really tried to avoid writing about global warming. First of all, I have absolutely no credentials—I took a couple meteorology courses in college and the FAA made me pass a weather test before they gave me a pilots license, but that don’t amount to boobs on a bull and I know it. Second of all, I have doubts—not that it’s gotten warmer, that seems pretty clear—but about the idea that we can predict what the weather will be for the whole damned planet in 2050. Tell me if my 4th of July barbecue is going to be rained out this year, then we’ll talk.

But you can’t be a global warming doubter anymore, that ship has sailed. Now, if you don’t bow down at the altar of Carbon Doom you are a global warming denier.

Denier. That’s not a description, that’s a curse. “Denier” is a six-letter four-letter word. Even the intelligent design morons don’t get stuck with tag; nobody calls them Darwin deniers, though maybe we should.

The only other pile of human refuse that gets that label are the Holocaust deniers. And every time I meet one of those pukes I smack him upside the head and ask him if he knows where the hell my relatives are who didn’t make it out of the Old Country before Kristallnacht.

No way I’ll let myself be a denier, nope. Not me.

So I’ll say I believe in Global Warming and get right with Al Gore the way a presidential candidate has to get right with Jesus, so I can move on to a small, secondary point.

The results from our first, tentative attempts to tackle climate change are in and we are making progress. The third world is slowly starving to death.

We are taking their lunch and burning it. The third world is being priced out of the food market. Our crops are much more valuable—to us, and our wounded planet—as ethanol.

Here’s the way it works. If you burn oil, which is old plants, you put new carbon into the air. But if you burn corn, which is new plants, you break even. Corn gets its carbon from the air, ethanol is carbon neutral, everybody wins.

Unless you happen to be partial to eating corn. It may escape us, here in the grease-and-blubber West, but corn is food. Lots of people eat it, lots of those eat mostly it, and it’s starting to get real expensive.

Let me address myself to those poor unfortunates who are suffering hunger pangs, all across our overheated globe:

You call it maize—we call it gas. Gas is worth a lot more and we have more money than you. Damn shame about the price of tortillas in Mexico, too bad about the food riots in Haiti, sorry about Africa (like anyone gives a crap about Africa) but the Audi’s tank is empty and Exxon wants four dollars per. Hand over those frijoles Pako, The White Man needs ‘em to Save the Earth.

I don’t want to be hard-hearted, I know this is rough on you brown peoples of the world, but it’s getting awful damned hot and my lawn looks like hell.

You guys breed to much. The ultimate cause of global warming is people. People use all that carbon and the fastest way to cut down the carbon is to cut down the population.

We here in the ecologically enlightened West know what’s best for the globe. We can’t keep burning fossil fuels and dumping CO² into the atmosphere until no polar bear is safe; that would be unconscionable. If we have to burn your corn for fuel, if we have to stop growing wheat to grow yet more corn to burn, if you have to starve to death to save the planet, then so be it. We have no choice—and neither do you.

Of course, starvation is slow and horrible; we feel your pain. Perhaps you should consider letting us press you for oil while you still weigh enough to give a good yield. That would be more compassionate, I think. Once global warming hits, you’re all going to drown anyway. Think how much good you can do for the earth by letting us render your aching bodies, right now.

You will have the world’s eternal gratitude. The first world, that is.

Allan Goldstein is a columnist for a San Francisco newspaper. His other work includes fiction, aviation writing, literary review fiction, blog posting, among others. His new novel is, “The Confessions of a Catnip Junkie.” He lives in the city, with his wife and two cats who are more beautiful than your children. You can read some of his published work on his website, allangoldstein.com.