Carbon hoofprint
Mack Hall

"If you want to save the planet let me see you jump."

- Madonna (not the Madonna, but Louise Ciccone Ritchie from Detroit)

Last year none of us had heard of such an object as a carbon footprint; this year we've all been assigned carbon footprints by our masters, and are told we are evil people for having 'em.

In my simplicity I still don't know what a carbon footprint is, but His Carbonated Highness, Representative John Dingell of Michigan, chairgod of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, proposes that I be taxed for having one.

New Jersey, ever the beacon of progress and civilization, has already passed a state law taxing carbon footprints.

I don't want to be thought a draft dodger in the War Against Hot Air or something, but where can I go to turn in my government-issued carbon footprint?

I didn't ask for one, and I'm being called rude names by Al Gore for having it. So I'd like to give it back, please.

And must I present myself at Pyongyang-style rallies, there to submerge my individuality within the milieu of millions of other Peasants and Workers, there to sing, clap, and wave my hands about rhythmically in order to stroke the egos of our cult leaders?

Is Global Warming our new god?

If so, he / she / it is an angry god, demanding the sacrifice of our nations, autonomy, homes, land, jobs, food, rationality, dignity, and even our very selves at the pagan altars of fear, ignorance, and superstition that St. Paul knocked down 2,000 years ago.

That god, in truth that same old little man behind the curtain, hypnotizes The People (bless them) with his endless chants of carbon offset, carbon credit, carbon emissions, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, carbon tax, carbon law, carbon neutral, carbon certificates, carbon count, carbon cycle, carbon cycle changes, carbon habit, carbon isotope data, carbon isotope ratio, carbon isotopic records, carbon cycle-climate relationship, carbon cycle dynamics, and carbon, carbon, carbon.

Amen.

The first flaw in current feeling (hardly thinking) about global warming is a failure to understand that reality is not subject to democracy.

A mob may agree that the planet is getting hot, and that you - not them - are at fault because of your perfidious respirations.

But is it true?

The second flaw is the feeling (hardly an idea) that the world can be saved from an imaginary threat if we worship aging white boys with guitars and obey an aging harridan who commands us to jump on her command.

Jump?

I don't think so, lady.

The planet is climatologically healthy; the growing number of sheep, especially jumping sheep, indicates this.

And the sheep might want to remember that their purpose is to be sheared annually by their masters, and in the end slaughtered and eaten.

Mack Hall is a resident of Kirbyville and does not own an I-Phone; he is still trying to cope with the rotary telephone.