I love science and have tremendous respect for scientific inquiry. I have studied science. I know a few scientists, and I generally like them. However, I know a few things about science, and scientists, that more people need to know, especially now. So today, I offer you a few really important things you need to know about science and scientists.
1. Scientists know almost everything about physics, and almost nothing about life. That’s why physicists can build a reliable nuclear weapon but doctors can’t cure the common cold. Objective science works well for calculating the trajectories and velocities of objects in space and time. Organisms, however, are not objects, and so objective science is completely inadequate for studying them.
Most scientists don’t know this, but it is true. Sadly, many scientists, especially in the US continue to study human beings as though we were objects, or piles of objects called atoms. This has led to a medical system that dehumanizes and objectifies us more effectively than it treats disease or promotes health. It also means that there’s a hell of a lot that doctors don’t know. One thing doctors do know, however, is how to talk down to you in such a way that you won’t question their bullshit.
Physicists know how to blow shit up, and they don’t argue about it. Physicians, on the other hand, barely know what they are looking at, and there’s a lot of disagreement among them about practically everything. Doctors don’t like to let on that they really don’t know what they are doing, so they formed the American Medical Association in order to put up a consistent front that makes it look like they have everything figured out and know what to do in every situation. They do this so that people will trust them, and unfortunately, it works entirely too well. The AMA works very hard to quell dissent within its ranks, and banishes doctors who refuse to tow the party line, but renegade doctors persist, and many of them have better success treating patients than doctors who follow AMA guidelines.
2. Almost everything we know about science, we learned from the pursuit of war. We learned physics in the development of ever more lethal weapons, and we learned medicine from patching up the survivors. Today our weapons kill people far more effectively than our doctors cure disease, and much of the advance in modern medicine has been in improving survival rates of people who suffer the kinds of traumatic injury that only technology can inflict.
3. Plebes worship “Science,” while scientists worship money. You can’t do science without money, and finding money to do science isn’t easy. Unless somebody thinks they can make a lot of money on it, or the military thinks they can kill people with it, you are probably going to have a hard time finding money to study it. On the other hand, if you don’t really care what you work on, as long as it pays well, your opportunities as a scientist multiply. Scientists spend a lot on their education, and they expect to be rewarded for that, so many scientists look for the higher paying jobs.
That’s why, when you need a scientist to do something really terrible, like design a nuclear weapon that kills all of the people in a city, but leaves the buildings standing, or turn a minor statistical anomaly into a smoke-screen argument against global warming, or bio-engineer a bat corona-virus so that it infects humans, you can always find a meek and obedient scientist who is happy to do it for you so long as you have the money.
Plebes, on the other hand, have disavowed the creation myth of their Judaeo-Christian heritage in favor of an even bigger pile of bullshit called the Big Bang Theory, and they now embrace “Science” the great spirit from whom all new technology flows, as a religion. They traded the clerical collar for the white lab-coat of scientific authority. Now they believe anything the doctor tells them, just like they used to believe the priest, and of course they take their vaccines as a sacrament to their faith in “Science.” I hope they’ve at least learned not to leave their kids alone with a scientist either.
People have always believed a lot of stupid stuff. As I’ve so eloquently said before, “Stupid and wrong is the natural human condition, and it has never stopped us before.” That said, the human body is smarter than science can comprehend, and its natural tendency to heal, especially when supported by good nutrition, proper exercise and a non-toxic environment, tends to make doctors look good, if they can somehow take credit for it, but the miracle is you, not the medicine, and your body knows more than your doctor.
That’s why you should be very careful about messing with that miracle, or trusting “Science.” Science is not some noble pursuit of the truth. Science is about warfare, money, power and greed, and any scraps of truth that emerge from it are purely coincidental. Science is a tool of exploitation and control. In fact, psychologists are studying you right now, and the people paying those psychologists intend to use the knowledge they gain to control and exploit you. That’s what you need to know about science.
(Introduction: I wrote this piece more than two years ago, before anyone ever heard of Covid-19. I didn’t publish it then because I didn’t want to broach the vaccine issue. I just didn’t have a dog in that race. Funny how some things change. Skeptics haven’t changed though. This loose association of intellectual bullies still spews the same pin-headed reductionist thinking laced with the same prejudices and privileged perspective that they’ve been spewing for years, so the piece remains relevant, regardless of how you feel about vaccines in general or the experimental new Covid-19 “vaccine.”)
Be careful of people who identify themselves as “Skeptics.” In the same way that the long history of religious violence spawned atheism, a movement which killed God in reaction to the undeniable corruption of the Church. The explosion of online disinformation has given rise to a reactionary movement known as “Skepticism” which views objective science as the ultimate authority on everything, including all of the stuff scientists know nothing about. The Skeptics movement presumes that objective science can, and will, lead to our complete understanding of the Universe, not to mention a technological utopia for all humanity. For all that scientists, especially biologists and ecologists refute this, “Skeptics” have bought into the “logic” of objective science and the predictability of physics and extrapolated them into a universal belief system.
Our culture reveres science and technology because of the everyday miracles they perform in our lives. From microwave ovens to smart phones, we give science and technology credit for all of the toys and tools that we use everyday, but have no idea how they work. Ever since Einstein foretold the invention of the nuclear bomb, we treat scientists, especially physicists (aka “rocket scientists”), as the ultimate authority on everything from the origin of the Universe to the mysteries of perception and the human mind. Many scientists eagerly embrace this view as well, which is why we see so many physicists, like Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Michio Kaku getting into showbiz to propagate this notion among people who would never take, let alone pass, the science courses they teach. As a result, we have elevated objective science from a method of inquiry, to a kind of religion.
Skeptics have become the Spanish Inquisition of this new Church of Sciencism, a religion that worships technology. In general, Skeptics believe in science more than they understand science, so they assume that scientists know more than they do, and they assume that what scientists believe, is true, even though most of what scientists believe, is their own assumptions. Skeptics believe they know more than they do, and of course, they always think they know more than you.
Skeptics used to tell us that environmentalists were just being emotional and alarmist when they warned of the consequences of climate disruption, not because they doubted the science of global warming, but because of their blind faith in, and love of, technology. As it turns out, climate disruption is even worse, and happening faster, than even those environmentalists predicted, driven by the technological innovations that Skeptics are so enamored with.
Now Skeptics tell us that if it weren’t for those emotional and alarmist environmentalists, we could build safe, new, nuclear power plants that would solve our carbon emission problem. Isn’t it funny how the same people who call you an idiot for visiting an acupuncturist, taking a homeopathic remedy, or reading a horoscope, somehow believe in the magic of a foolproof nuclear power plant, with immunity to natural disaster and impenetrable defenses against military attack, and have complete faith in our ability to safely store tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste for at least a quarter-of-a-million years, despite all of the evidence to the contrary.
Skeptics love science, except when it reminds them that in our militaristic culture, we use science and technology to kill people, enslave them and make the planet uninhabitable. To Skeptics, this is a small price to pay in their ever-elusive quest for the complete understanding of the universe. They think it’s great to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for bigger and better atom-smashers, but scoff at mega-churches and their super-rich preachers. They revere people in lab-coats rather than clerical robes and say their prayers to Elon Musk’s rocket in lieu of a deity, but think you quaint for your archaic religious beliefs.
As an innocent word in the English language, “skepticism” denotes a good thing. Everyone says “Never look a gift horse in the mouth,” but if anyone ever gives you a horse, say “thank you,” lead it away to someplace private, and take a damn good look inside that horses mouth before you take it back to the farm. That’s a healthy kind of skepticism. The Skeptics Movement on the other hand, promotes a very misguided brand of fundamentalism quite at odds with the evidence and the best science. As a movement, Skeptics differ little from flat-earthers in their zeal to oversimplify the universe.
In the same way that the Catholic Church empowered small vile men to indulge their sadistic tendencies on poor peasant women who practiced herbal medicine, showed a reverence for nature, or rejected church doctrine, the Skeptics movement empowers eggheads with a superiority complex to bully women who reject western medicine and ridicule them for refusing to vaccinate their children. Skeptics don’t lead the charge to stop the excessive use of antibiotics on livestock, which scientists tell us, breeds drug-resistant super-bugs that threaten us all, nor do Skeptics make noise about corporate ag practices that lead to widespread food contamination. In reality, kids today face a greater threat from their school lunches than they do from their unvaccinated classmates, but Skeptics, like the Inquisition, choose their victims for their vulnerability.
Whether it’s high-level nuclear waste, persistent bio-accumulative pesticides, microplastics or fracking fluids, Skeptics have never met a toxic pollutant they didn’t like, as long as it is “safely contained” or “below a certain threshold.” They are perfectly willing to accept human casualties, lots of them, in the pursuit of technological innovation, or as an “unexpected consequence” of it, but something must be done about these heretical women who refuse to submit to the authority of Science.
Beware of Skeptics. Skeptics believe themselves wise and capable of navigating our technological society through the current climate crisis, or any other cataclysm their unbridled technocracy may unleash, were they not hindered in their efforts by the large number of superstitious savages who surround them. In reality, that unfounded, and unwarranted belief in their own wisdom created the climate crisis, and the extinction crisis, not to mention the gross inequality we see in our technological society.
For Skeptics, human casualties are just statistics, and your life, merely anecdotal evidence. Skeptics enjoy this kind of separation from the hazards of a technological society, primarily by virtue of their privileged position within it. Skeptics are mostly white, middle-class, college-educated people, and as such, can use their economic clout to limit their exposure to environmental toxins and avoid the worst industrial hazards, while they marvel at the achievements of unbridled human ingenuity and enjoy all of the new toys technology has made available.
Capital “S” Skepticism reeks of chauvinism and white supremacy. Skeptics dismiss the collective wisdom of indigenous humanity as “superstition and folklore,” but they share the blind arrogance of privilege ,and the prejudices of a culture that denigrates nature, and they mistake that belligerent blindness, for intelligence. They ignore the grim consequences of our high-tech civilization, while they embrace a completely imaginary, sci-fi vision of a future technological utopia. Capital “S” Skepticism simply cloaks the overt racism of white supremacy behind a thin veil of “nature and nurture” intellectualism.
There’s no horror they can’t justify and no atrocity they can’t rationalize in their misguided quest to misunderstand the universe, because understanding nature was never the intention of science. The intention of science has always been to rule nature, including human nature, with technology. Skeptics expect to have power over others, and they expect to have a very abstract relationship to the consequences of their decisions. That’s why Skeptics feel so comfortable making decisions for other people based on their own, emotionally detached, logic. Skeptics expect to rule the world by virtue of their intellectual superiority, which, in their minds, is always beyond question. We need to be very careful of people who think like that.
My partner, Amy Gustin had a great idea the other day. This is not at all unusual for her. A lot of my columns begin with one of her great ideas. The other day, Amy was perusing some books about the cave paintings at Lascaux and Chauvet while contemplating the flora and fauna of Ice Age Europe, and speculating about the Paleolithic origins of certain pagan European Christmas symbols, when she said this: “Environmentalists should take over Christmas.”
“What?” I replied.
She explained that a lot of European pagan Christmas symbols celebrate the Boreal Forest and an arctic climate. We have Christmas trees. Christmas is the only time of year when snow is popular, and Santa lives at the North Pole and gets around on a sled pulled by caribou. All of these things remind us of the arctic, and they should remind us that the arctic is undergoing dramatic changes due to global climate change.
Can you think of a better symbol for global climate change that Santa Claus? First, he drives a zero emission, carbon neutral vehicle, and he’s been doing it for centuries. Second, everything Santa owns faces imminent destruction, unless we can stop the sea ice from shrinking. Santa, Mrs. Claus, all of the elves and the whole toy factory are headed straight for a watery grave at the bottom of the ocean, unless we stop global warming now.
Suddenly, Christmas made sense to me in a whole new way, and I knew I had to write about it. Global Climate Crisis is the biggest challenge we face as a species; it deserves our biggest holiday, especially since those Sciencism dorks took over Earth Day. Fuck them and their March for Science. The people who gave us nuclear proliferation, and put 250 different persistent man-made toxins in every mother’s breast milk came out and walked all over Earth Day to tell us that scientists agree that global warming is a real phenomena, and by the way, go vaccinate your kids, eat your GMOs and have faith in Elon Musk’s space program. May the force be with you. Nanu Nanu.
We need Christmas if we are going to turn around the climate crisis. Forget about the baby Jesus and the Catholic Church’s first victim of sexual abuse. Jesus has always been a divisive figure, even as a baby, and nativity scenes often stir controversy. Who needs it? If you want to put out your creche, go ahead, just leave the holy family in the box. Go ahead and put out all of the animals. They’re the only thing anyone really likes about your creche anyway. Then go ahead and add a few more animals. Christmas is all about protecting biodiversity, so go wild on the animals.
Coca Cola has done a great job of making the polar bear into a symbol of Christmas, and we should adopt that symbol wholeheartedly. Instead of Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus, put a mother polar bear and her two cubs in your nativity scene. I’m all for wise men, if you can find any, but how wise can your men be if they’re standing next to a hungry polar bear.
Global Climate Crisis effects everyone, and it’s time to make Christmas into a holiday for everyone. From now on, Christmas is about the North Pole, and the gift of a stable climate. Being born doesn’t get you a holiday, in my book. Jesus has a holiday, it’s the one he lived and died for, and Christians should go ahead and do Easter big, but Christmas is too important to let Christians hog it to themselves. Besides, Christmas is better without Jesus.
We’ve still got Santa Claus, but now Christmas is about saving Santa. We’ve got reindeer and sleigh-bells, snow and Christmas trees and we’ve got all of the animals coming together to help their friend the polar bear. We’ve got the Nutcracker to help us crack the nut of global climate change, and we can re-edit the Charlie Brown Christmas Special so that Linus’ big speech reflects the holiday’s bold new direction. Everything you love about Christmas will still be there for you, but now, Christmas has a mission.
A lot has happened since I first wrote these words a couple of years ago. For one, Amy and I had the opportunity to visit Lascaux and Chauvet, as well as many other European prehistoric art sites. We also visited the Arctic Circle and the reindeer herding Sami people in Northern Sweden and Norway. Inspired by these experiences, Amy wrote a new Christmas myth, and I composed a musical soundtrack to accompany it. We call it “Sarah’s Search for Santa.” It is the story of a young girl’s search for the meaning of Christmas, and it is now available as a CD or digital download. We love it, and I think you will too. Here’s a little bit about it:
Sarah’s Search for Santa, A Different Kind of Christmas Album
If Santa Claus is a myth, does that mean Christmas isn’t real? This question sends the young protagonist, “Sarah,” on a magical quest to find the deepest roots of Christmas. By drawing on the animist and shamanic elements of the world’s most popular holiday, Sarah’s Search for Santa traces the origins of the season’s most beloved icon, Santa Claus, and his flying reindeer, back to their beginnings in Ice Age Europe. Amy Gustin, host of the Living Earth Connection, a radio show, blog and podcast that examines the roots of our current global ecological crisis from the perspective of animist spirituality, and musician, record producer and filmmaker, John Hardin have teamed up to produce a new and very unusual Christmas album that the whole family can enjoy.
This modern fairy tale uses spare language, old European Christmas melodies and mesmerizing instrumental music to take us back in time, through the eyes of a young girl, whose parents recently told her that Santa wasn’t real. In Sarah’s Search for Santa, Sarah finds a new ornament on her Christmas tree, left for her by a mysterious stranger who visits her home on Christmas Eve. As she follows the stranger outside, she finds herself in an unfamiliar forest where she meets a reindeer who takes her on a magical journey through space and time to find Santa Claus.
Sarah’s Search for Santa sprang out of Gustin and Hardin’s quest to learn about, and connect with, their own indigenous European animist roots. Their quest took them to ancient rock art sites in France, Sweden and Norway, medieval villages in Germany, and North of the Arctic Circle to meet Sami people and study their culture. This new fairy tale draws from all of these experiences and culminates in a gentle story, set to original music, told in a way that everyone can enjoy, and a child can understand.
“I always loved fairy tales growing up, and never lost my attraction for them” Gustin explains, “I eventually came to realize that the magical quality that appealed to me in fairy tales was the animist worldview. Animism is the perception that the world around us is alive and intelligent. All of our early human ancestors were animists, and fairy tales are one of the last bastions of animism in Western Civilization. Fairy tales remain one of the best ways to express an animist worldview, because stories convey meaning on a deeper level than facts, logic and statistics. In regards to Christmas, Christmas trees, reindeer, Amanita mushrooms and Santa Claus are not unbroken Christmas traditions, but these symbols reemerge because they remind us of our indigenous shamanic beginnings, and these animist origins have a powerful attraction. Reindeer, for example, resonate so deeply with us because they were critical to our ancestor’s survival during Europe’s Ice Ages.”
“The Amanita muscaria mushroom has fascinated me since I was young” Gustin offered, “I’ve bought toys and art with this symbol, because seeing it always makes my heart leap with joy. I have since learned that these mushrooms have an ancient shamanic history that pre-dates their magical association with Christmas. In Sarah’s Search for Santa the mushroom acts as a guiding spirit, and the reindeer eats one before their flight. Reindeer are known to search out these mushrooms and eat them, which ties into the legend of flying reindeer.”
“Sarah’s Search for Santa grew out of a variety of interests: a deep love and fascination with reindeer, the Taiga forest, tundra, and arctic cultures and habitats, as well as European Ice Age art and animals, and a rekindling of my love for Christmas celebrations.” Gustin continues, “At first, these seemed like separate unconnected topics, but by following the golden threads, I discovered that they all connected. The cultures of the arctic provide good models for how our European Ice Age ancestors lived. Reindeer kept Ice Age Europeans alive during the coldest periods of our history. At the La Madeleine rock shelter near Les Eyzies, France, reindeer make up 87-100% of all the animal remains found in almost every layer of excavation. Reindeer not only provided food to our Ice Age ancestors, but people relied on reindeer hides for warm clothing, bones, tendons and antlers for making tools and weapons, and guts and hooves for everything from cooking utensils to storage containers. You can find beautiful depictions of reindeer made by ancient people in the caves of La Combarelles and Font de Gaume in Les Eyzies France, so it’s no surprise to see reindeer reappear in European Christmas celebrations centuries later. Sarah’s Search for Santa reminds us of the deep connection we have with these remarkable animals.”
The painted caves of Southwestern France also inspire the music that accompanies Sarah’s Search for Santa. “The acoustics in these painted caves are extraordinary.” Hardin points out. “In Grotte de Cougnac, archaeologists tell us that ancient people played the stalagmites in the cave like a giant stone marimba. While touring these caves, I realized that the art depicted on the walls only tells part of the story. The sound of these places, and the music people made within them must have had a central role in the rites and rituals conducted there. After visiting the caves, I began imagining what kind of music prehistoric Ice Age people might have made in these sacred spaces, based on archaeological findings, indigenous tribal music, and surviving shamanic traditions.”
“About half of the music in Sarah’s Search for Santa conveys this tribal, shamanic vibe with drums, rattles, overtone flutes and didgeridoo. The balance of the music to Sarah’s Search for Santa expresses the young girl’s sense of wonder, and love of Christmas with sounds that hearken back to medieval Europe: a reedy organ ambiance, sleigh bells, a tinkling glockenspiel, and traditional Christmas melodies played on the recorder.” Hardin explains, adding “Of course, there’s also a little magic that only modern electronics can provide.”
Sarah’s Search for Santa consists of two tracks, pt 1, Sarah Meets a Reindeer, and pt 2, Finding Santa Claus. This full length album is available as a download for $7.00, and as a CD for $12 at johnhardin.bandcamp.com. If you are in Humboldt County, you can also find it at The Rocking Horse, and People’s Records on the Plaza in Arcata, and at Works Records in Eureka.
Last week I hosted a show about the housing crisis on my local community radio station. Like a lot of the country, we have a chronic housing shortage, especially affordable housing, and as a result, thousands of people sleep outside, or in their cars, on these cold, rainy winter nights. After the show, a woman approached me to make a comment. She told me that the people she sees on the street don’t seem very friendly to her. She noticed that the people who carry big backpacks and appear to be living outside, mostly talk to, and associate with, each other. They don’t make much of an effort to engage with the rest of society. She seemed to think that they owe us more of an effort.
I told her that I didn’t think poor people owed her anything. By the time you’ve made someone sleep outside in the rain, put up fences and bars everywhere, and paid cops to roust them from every dry, sheltered place they can find, you’ve pretty much blown your chances for friendship, and you should not be surprised to find them in a bad mood. Everyone seems eager to offer helpful criticism to poor people as to what they could improve about themselves to better deserve our compassion, but I have to ask, and I wish I had asked: What about mainstream society deserves respect? Why should poor people voluntarily participate in a system designed to oppress them? More importantly, why do any of us participate in a system that excludes so many people and denies them even the most basic of their human needs?
Once upon a time, we would say that our society deserved respect because we followed God’s word and we endeavored to obey God’s command, so only God could judge us, but to disrespect our society was to disrespect God himself. A whole lot of people still believe that, by the way. There’s really no point in talking to those people. Rational arguments only go so far with them, and I respect that. Belief is a powerful thing. A shared belief brings stability and cohesiveness to a group, even if those beliefs destabilize the climate, disintegrate the ecosystem, and contradict compelling evidence to the contrary.
These days, the rest of us mostly fancy ourselves rational, intelligent creatures capable understanding the world around us, and of making wise decisions for ourselves and the common good. This is every bit as stupid and crazy as believing in God’s word, but it is also just as important to our identity as Jesus is to Christians’. What’s more, this idea is foundational to the concept of democracy, which has become our new religion.
The News has replaced Mass, and elections have replaced The Holy Communion, but it’s essentially the same mass stupidity. Still, you can talk to these people, because they believe deep in their heart that they can solve any problem with rational thinking and creativity, even if they have no real experience at doing either.
If you believe in the supremacy of human intelligence, and your own ability to think something through, this is one of those things that maybe you ought to take the time to think all the way through: What about our society deserves your respect? And more tangibly: What about our society merits your participation? Think about that for a moment.
Off hand, I can think of a lot of reasons to be ashamed of our society. We should be ashamed of global climate change, and what it means for future generations. We should be ashamed that we have exterminated half of the world’s biodiversity in the last 40 years, and that we squeeze more than a hundred species of plant and animal out of existence and into extinction every day. We should be ashamed that today, having practically exhausted the Earth’s resources, all we have to show for it is a few billionaires, a host of toxic gadgets designed to exploit our every thought, and poverty, poverty everywhere.
Historically, we should be ashamed of genocide. We should be ashamed of slavery. We should be ashamed of internments, witch hunts, lynchings, black lists, prohibitions, Jim Crow etc. We should be ashamed of US foreign policy. That’s just off the top of my head, but it’s already a pretty serious list. I could go on.
I’m not trying to make you feel bad, I’m just pointing out that we sacrifice a lot, and we excuse an awful lot of really bad behavior, in order to participate in this society. If we could each choose whether or not to participate in modern society based entirely on principle, I’m sure that a lot of people would find our society too distasteful.
Unfortunately, most of us choose to participate in this modern society out of economic pressure, not principle. You work hard and pay taxes, not because of your burning desire to glorify the proud fatherland, but because you are hungry, and because you want to have a roof over your head. We participate in this society largely because of economic coercion, but we tell ourselves that somehow we are in control, and can fix it all with an election, because we are intelligent, rational people capable of understanding the world and making good decisions. That’s the mythology of a democratic society.
In reality, we mindlessly help the likes of Bill Gates, Elan Musk and Donald Trump mine whatever is left of the Earth’s natural abundance to further their plans to re-engineer the world, escape from the consequences of that re-engineering and put their name in gold letters across whatever is left of it, respectively. Not only that, we step over the broken bodies and spirits of our brothers and sisters to do it. Honestly, there’s nothing sane, rational or respectable about any of it. That’s the real crisis today. There is nothing respectable about modern society. It’s a crime, a disaster, and a failure all rolled into one.
Today, we see democracy for the fraud that it is, a thin veneer of populism over a machine built with violence and coercion, for the purpose of violence and coercion. We have plenty to be ashamed of, as a society, and our complete failure to meet the critical challenges of our time, only adds to that legacy of shame.
We no longer believe in God, but now democracy has failed us too. Our gods have died. Only crazy people worship dead gods, but worship them we do, because we have no idea what else to do. What’s more, we still expect the people we sacrificed to these gods to worship them too. And you thought the homeless were mentally ill.
My partner, Amy Gustin had a great idea the other day. This is not at all unusual for her. A lot of my columns begin with one of her great ideas, and this is one of them. The other day, Amy was perusing some books about the cave paintings at Lascaux and Chauvet while contemplating the flora and fauna of Ice Age Europe, and speculating about the Paleolithic origins of certain pagan European Christmas symbols, when she said this: “Environmentalists should take over Christmas.”
“What?” I replied. She explained that a lot of European pagan Christmas symbols celebrate the Boreal Forest and an arctic climate. We have Christmas trees. Christmas is the only time of year when snow is popular, and Santa lives at the North Pole and gets around on a sled pulled by caribou. All of these things remind us of the arctic, and they should remind us that the arctic is undergoing dramatic changes due to global climate change.
Can you think of a better symbol for global climate change that Santa Claus? First, he drives a zero emission, carbon neutral vehicle, and he’s been doing it for centuries. Second, everything Santa owns faces imminent destruction, unless we can stop the sea ice from shrinking. Santa, Mrs. Claus, all of the elves and the whole toy factory are headed straight for a watery grave at the bottom of the ocean, unless we stop global warming now.
Suddenly, Christmas made sense to me in a whole new way, and I knew I had to write about it. Global Climate Crisis is the biggest challenge we face as a species; it deserves our biggest holiday, especially since those Sciencism dorks took over Earth Day. Fuck them and their March for Science. The people who gave us nuclear proliferation, and put 250 different persistent man-made toxins in every mother’s breast milk came out and walked all over Earth Day to tell us that scientists agree that global warming is a real phenomena, and by the way, go vaccinate your kids, eat your GMOs and have faith in Elon Musk’s space program. May the force be with you. Nanu Nanu.
We need Christmas if we are going to turn around the climate crisis. Forget about the baby Jesus and the Catholic Church’s first victim of sexual abuse. Jesus has always been a divisive figure, even as a baby, and nativity scenes often stir controversy. Who needs it? If you want to put out your creche, go ahead, just leave the holy family in the box. Go ahead and put out all of the animals. They’re the only parts anyone really likes about your creche anyway. Then go ahead and add a few more animals. Christmas is all about protecting biodiversity, so go wild on the animals.
Coca Cola has done a great job of making the polar bear into a symbol of Christmas, and we should adopt that symbol wholeheartedly. Instead of Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus, put a mother polar bear and her two cubs in your nativity scene. I’m all for wise men, if you can find any, but how wise can your men be if they’re standing next to a hungry polar bear.
Global Climate Crisis effects everyone, and it’s time to make Christmas into a holiday for everyone. From now on, Christmas is about the North Pole, and the gift of a stable climate. Being born doesn’t get you a holiday, in my book. Jesus has a holiday, it’s the one he lived and died for, and Christians should go ahead and do Easter big, but Christmas is too important to let Christians hog it to themselves. Besides, Christmas is better without Jesus.
We’ve still got Santa Claus, but now Christmas is about saving Santa. We’ve got reindeer and sleigh-bells, snow and Christmas trees and we’ve got all of the animals coming together to help their friend the polar bear. We’ve got the Nutcracker to help us crack the nut of global climate change, and we can re-edit the Charlie Brown Christmas Special so that Linus’ big speech reflects the holiday’s bold new direction. Everything you love about Christmas will still be there for you, but now, Christmas has a mission.
A couple of weeks ago they held the first national March for Science. I love science, and I have a deep appreciation for science and scientific inquiry. I don’t trust scientists, however, and I’m very suspicious of their political agenda, so I did not feel inclined to join them in this demonstration. For as much as I love science, I don’t worship it. In fact, I think it’s kind of a bad cultural habit, but it’s one I picked up early, so I try to make the most of it.
I understand the science behind the Climate Crisis, and I know why ecologists say we have entered the sixth great extinction event in the history of life on Earth. I appreciate that many scientists recognize the grave threat we face from these crises, and I know that they hope to raise awareness about why we should pay attention to this kind of science, but I also know that scientists led us down this road to ruin in the first place, and their siren song continues to seduce us at our peril.
A lot of people tell me that they think science has made us smarter, and that the technology it spawned has made life better, but they could hardly be more wrong. Quite the opposite, in fact. Science may have changed our cultural mythology, but it has failed to reform our culture in any significant way. Meanwhile, technology has unleashed the deadliest holocaust on planet Earth since an asteroid strike wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. That’s what science tells us about science and technology.
The objective evidence gathered in the field of ecology should disabuse us of any delusions of grandeur we derive from the mental masturbation we call quantum mechanics and theoretical physics. According to the World Wildlife Federation’s Living Planet Report of 2016, global wildlife populations, declined by 58% between 1970 and 2012, due primarily to human activity. That means there are less than half as many wild animals on Earth today, as there were on the first Earth Day. Science and technology had a large part in making these numbers a reality. Does that sound smart? Does that sound like an improvement?
Far from an intellectual advance, science has merely replaced one ludicrous myth with another. We replaced the myth of an omnipotent deity who created the world and molded humanity in his own image with the myth of a giant bomb that exploded out of nothing. They’re both stupid, and they’re both wrong and neither of these myths have made us any smarter. We’ve merely replaced the guys in monasteries who wore robes and studied ancient texts with guys in universities who wear lab-coats and peer into microscopes. Beneath them both lies the same pathological, ecocidal culture we call “civilization.” Instead of bestowing wisdom, science usurped the power of the church, creating a new religion based on the same old stupidity.
Here’s an example that illustrates how scientists dress up the same old medieval religious stupidity in the new clothes of secular science: Darwin theorized, not that we humans descended from apes, but that we are apes, and that we are but one specialized species of animal in a great pantheon of specialists. This, generally accepted, scientific theory of the origin of species, should have laid to rest the religious idea that God made man in his own image, and blown that “dominion” shit right out of the water, but these Medieval ideas remain as strong as ever, especially among scientists, because universities continue to teach scientists to view human beings as the only intelligent species on planet Earth, and the only ones capable of determining our own destiny. Most scientists still presume the superiority of the human intellect, and believe that the millions of other, “inferior,” species upon this planet exist purely for our benefit, to study, displace, or even kill for sport, just because those creatures don’t share our particular specialty. How is that different from any other form of chauvinism?
Businessmen and politicians use science in exactly the same way they used religion in medieval times: to control the masses and to give them an advantage in war. Instead of buying indulgences, they now invest in clean technology, or hire a panel of experts. Instead of asking the Pope to bless their military campaigns and inspire their troops, the military now pays universities to research and design new weapons, including psychological ones.
Both scientists and the clergy gained power over the masses by performing magic tricks, and promising salvation. Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, while scientists point to “Trinity,” the first detonation of a nuclear bomb. Christianity promises life after death. Science promises a brighter future through technology.
The fact that we still fall for this BS, even though industrial technology invariably creates much bigger problems than it solves, demonstrates our willful ignorance and cultural intransigence. In reality, we’re no closer to understanding how the universe works, today, than we were 500 years ago, or even five thousand years ago, and modern Americans are probably the stupidest creatures to ever walk the face of the Earth, thanks largely to science and technology.
When you consider science from the perspective of how it has affected our culture, I hardly see science as an improvement over religion. Trading religion for science is kind of like trading The New Yorker for Penthouse. Religion incorporates literature, poetry, art, music, dance, architecture, and more, into a framework that advises people on how to live and addresses most aspects of human life, whereas science just says, “Show me what I want to see.”
Where religion teaches kindness, charity, decency and humility, science presents endless possibilities, stripped of morals, ethics or aesthetics, like doors that open dark rooms full of unforeseen consequences. Science loves unforeseen consequences. “Unforeseen consequences” is where science gets all of its new material. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of medieval Christianity, but I’d no sooner march for science, in the way it is practiced today, than I would march in support of the Inquisition.
Everyone seems to be looking for the right balance between “the Economy” and “the Environment,” as though they could find some sweet spot there. As if lawmakers could craft a policy that spurs economic growth, prevents habitat loss, and promotes biodiversity, all at the same time. Even our local environmental groups want to get in on this balancing act. They preface their appeals for tighter environmental regulation of the marijuana industry with the admission that they recognize the importance of the marijuana industry to our local economy, and ask for a “balanced approach.” In truth, they aren’t asking the Supes to balance the needs of “the environment” with the needs of “the economy.” Instead, they’re asking the Supes to balance the demands of growers, for less regulation, with the demands of the environmentalists who support their organization, for regulations to protect endangered species, preserve forest ecosystems and limit pollution and other impacts.
We should remember that when we talk about “the Economy” vs “The Environment,” we’re not talking about two parts of a whole. “The Economy” and “The Environment” are two opposing ways of seeing the world. Scientists, educated people, and people who watch The Discovery Channel recognize that the natural world functions as its own economy.
In nature, every creature takes what it needs of what it can find in the world around it, and in death, every creature returns those nutrients to the system that gave it life. That’s how the natural economy works, but that’s not what we mean by “economic activity.” The world’s natural economy has nothing to do with “the Economy” at all. All of that natural economy stuff happens in “the Environment.”
For most humans “the Economy” is also an environment. When a businessman talks about “the business environment,” he’s not talking about the forest; he’s talking about “the Economy.” If you live in the city, very little of what you see, belongs to the natural world, and almost everything you see is for sale. Even in the suburbs, people largely inhabit “the Economy.” Most people have to spend money to visit “the Environment” in person, but most just look at it on TV, which they also pay for.
So, “the Environment” is really the ultimate economy, and “The Economy” is the environment most people live in. It’s very confusing. Even though we civilized people inhabit “the Economy,” more than “the Environment” we still, ultimately, rely on the natural economy, for our survival. That’s why people care so much about “the Environment” Get it?
We find this hard to understand because it’s still culturally alien to us. The idea that any part of the natural world should remain unbent by the hand of man, is a very new one, in our culture. Civilization was founded on the principle that the natural world belongs to us, as human beings, to use as we see fit. Religion tells us that God thinks we humans are special, and that he gave us dominion over his creation. Science tells us that we are much smarter than the rest of creation, and that we, and only we, have the capacity to understand how the universe works. Therefore, it makes sense that we would, with our new, secular, scientific, understanding of how the universe works, radically transform the surface of the Earth for our own purposes.
Of course, the harmony, justice and equality we see in cities all over the world provides clear objective evidence of our superior wisdom, and using the very best science, we can demonstrate from our 10,000 year history, as masters of our own destiny, that we have crafted a culture suited for the ages, as sustainable, resilient and regenerative as nature herself, only better. If your sarcasm meter hasn’t gone off, it needs new batteries.
At least religion had the nerve warn us of the current apocalypse. Science remains in denial, choosing rather to search for the Higgs Boson, gravitational waves, or other such angels that dance on heads of pins, even as it reports that civilization has triggered a cataclysmic, era-ending global extinction event, and forecasts dire consequences from, human-caused, global warming.
Whichever of our cultural myths you prefer, they all tell us that the Earth is putty in our hands, to be shaped as we see fit. Unfortunately, the truth of our time tells use that our culture was wrong. For ten-thousand years, our culture taught us to despise nature and to deny our natural instincts. In exchange, it promised us enlightenment, salvation, and wisdom. Today, we see what our culture has really delivered: extinction, pollution, endless technological warfare, poverty, crime, addiction, and global environmental devastation, just for starts. For hundreds of generations, we bet our lives on the myths of this culture. Just look around. Anyone with eyes can see that it’s time to cut our losses and face reality.
We inherited a bankrupt culture. Our myths lie and our gods have forsaken us. Our culture, civilization, has been at war with nature for about 10,000 years. Now that we have defeated nature so completely, we realize that we have wrecked our lifeboat. We scramble for survival on an increasingly inhospitable planet, enslaved by the ultra-violent, all-consuming culture we inherited from our parents, and fuel with our lives. The truth stares us in the face, but we have no Plan B.
When we talk about “the Economy,” we’re talking about, our culture, civilization, that machine that turns our lives into toil, and the natural world into waste, based on those lies that promised us wisdom, salvation, enlightenment and leisure time, but delivered extinction, waste, poverty, and addiction. “The Economy” is itself, an addiction. We’ve become dependent on it, and we know it’s killing us, but we can scarcely imagine what our lives would be like without it. When we talk about balancing the “the Environment” and “the Economy,” it’s like balancing the needs of the man, to be cured of his alcoholism, with the needs of the alcohol, to be drunk by him.
It doesn’t make sense to talk about the “health” of “the Economy” because “the Economy” is a disease. The only question that remains is: Is this disease fatal to humanity, or can we defeat it, before it defeats us. “The Environment” is the only thing that can sustain us. We cannot afford to lose another inch of it. These are new ideas in this culture, but their truth becomes more apparent every day.
That’s why we need environmental protection far more stringent than anything we’ve seen before, and that’s why we should not tolerate new development that encroaches on the Earth’s little remaining natural habitat or impacts delicate forest ecosystems. I’ve heard a lot of local dope yuppies say. “Hey, look at the damage the logging industry did. Look at how much water those vineyards use. What’s wrong with my little three-acre conversion? Why are we pot farmers being singled-out for all of this regulation?”
It’s not your industry being singled-out. It’s our whole generation being stuck with the mess left by five-hundred generations of people who chose arrogance over respect, and mistook ego for intelligence. It’s about facing facts, and coming to terms with the truth, or it’s about denial, and suicide, but it’s not about your industry being singled-out. That’s just you being paranoid and egocentric, and those are just bad habits of ours, culturally.
In recent weeks, I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to vent my spleen about the people who cause the most problems in my community, especially because I hear so much poisonous rhetoric on the other side, targeting the poor. I’m not a fan of class warfare, but when served, I will answer. It’s always shameful and small to pick on someone weaker than you, and it’s always heroic to stand up to a bully. The way I see it, in this current class war, unless you are squarely allied with the poor, you work for the rich.
If you take sides with the rich, in this war, you deserve a punishment a thousand times worse than my stinging words. In this war between the rich and the poor, the middle-class becomes the battlefield, and no one deserves to be pounded into a smoking heap of rubble and ash more than the American middle-class, because the middle-class acts as the mercenary army of the super-rich.
The poor have nothing to lose, and everything to gain by standing up to their oppressors, while the middle-class face trauma and disillusionment, as they slowly wake up to the fact that, in this war, they were the bad guys all along, who wasted their lives, and the planet, on a fantasy lifestyle, that became an economic and environmental monstrosity beyond their darkest nightmares.
When you’ve sold your life for trinkets and find yourself on the wrong side of history, denial becomes a coping mechanism For the rich, losing the class war compares to losing the civil war. Resentments and prejudice will linger, as today’s middle-class conservatives becomes the bitter poor white crackers of the future.
But it doesn’t have to be that way for us here in SoHum. Here in SoHum we have no class, and that’s a kind of poverty that unites us all, from the richest dope yuppie, to the most wretched street urchin, so why should we let class war divide us? We shouldn’t! We should recognize that we’re all poor. Really, I pity us all.
Why do we work so goddamn hard? Why do we break laws and sell our weed to out of state drug dealers? We do it because we don’t have enough money, right. If we don’t have enough money, it means that some of our wants and needs will go unmet. Am I wrong? Unmet needs equals poverty, and poverty means you’re poor. So face it! We’re all poor. It’s really true. I don’t care how entranced you are with your trinkets, or how jealous you are of anyone else’, we all live in poverty, and our lives are being stolen from us right before our eyes.
That said, everything we do to make life easier for poor people, makes life easier for us. Think about it. What are the chances that you, or any of your progeny will find yourselves counted among the nations wealthiest one-tenth of one percent? It could happen. You could hit the lottery. Your new cannabis start-up could blow-up big, or your daughter could marry a rich old guy with a heart condition, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
On the other hand, what are the chances that you, or any of your kids or grandchildren might find yourself short on cash with no place to crash, or be blessed with a personality ill-suited for gainful employment, or fall victim to alcoholism, or become addicted to drugs, or for some other reason, fail to thrive, economically? I don’t know the exact odds, but I’d bet on it, if I were you.
That’s why it always makes sense to make life easier for poor people. When you make life easier for poor people, you make life easier for yourself. I’m not saying we have to spend a lot of money to help the poor, but if we at least stop paying people to punish, harass, and humiliate them, we’d all be ahead. If we could recognize that a lot of people who live here will never earn enough to money to afford a place to live under our current system of building codes and zoning ordinances, we could begin to solve a lot of problems by changing the system, instead of trying to change people. People don’t need more money; people need a place to be. Life is hard enough, let’s not make it any harder.
When you make life easier for poor people, you make life easier for your self, and you make the world richer for everyone, because making it easier to be poor, lowers everyone’s stress level, which benefits everyone, and makes it easier to be an artist, craftsman, musician, poet or writer; you make it possible for the people who don’t care so much about making money, to put their energy into the things that really matter to them. When you make life easier for poor people, you make life better for everyone, and you encourage a flourishing culture. That’s why they call New Orleans “The Big Easy.” and that’s why people love it.
People who appreciate an easy life and a flourishing culture, have class. Punishing the poor for their poverty only fuels their resentment, and perpetuates class war. So, we have a choice: We can have some class, or we can have class war. We’re all poor, and we all need somewhere to get out of the weather this winter. We can solve this problem together, or we can make more problems for each other. It’s up to us.
In separate interactions with two different liberal lawyers, recently, I heard the same phrase uttered as an excuse for human caused environmental devastation. It sounded all too familiar. It’s a deceptively simple phrase, but it conceals one of the fundamental myths of this new science-based religion called “Secular Humanism.” Both of these gentlemen expressed this phrase as a personal belief. “I just think that we are a species in the midst of adolescence.” or “I believe that we are a species in adolescence,” was more or less how they put it. That’s a strange thing to believe.
Secular humanists have adopted this strange belief in the adolescence of the human species because of their strange belief in science. Believing in science is pretty weird too, if you ask me. Not that anyone did, but still, it’s one thing to learn about the world using the scientific method, and it’s something else altogether to “believe in” science.
Secular humanists think that our objective, scientific understanding of the universe is the greatest thing since sliced bread. They see the emergence of science as a guiding light that will see us through this difficult phase of our evolution, our adolescence, if you will. We must be doing something right, they reason, if we can put a nuclear powered car on Mars, calculate the moment of the Big Bang to the millisecond and find the goddamn Higgs boson, and they assume there is a point to it all. They see the scientific viewpoint as superior. Our best hope for survival, as a species, they will tell you, is more science and technology. That’s what I mean when I say that Secular Humanists “believe in science.”
Unfortunately, the facts on the ground tell us that most of today’s really pressing crises originated with some new scientific development, and the technology it inspired. For instance we face Global Warming because of certain developments in chemistry, a few mechanical inventions, and a hell of a lot of marketing. The knowledge that science gives us, has led to horrific disasters and environmental devastation around the globe. From the spectre of nuclear warfare to global climate change, to overpopulation, every new scientific discovery leads to new technology, which creates a new crisis.
We tell ourselves that all of this destruction is part of our “education” as a species. We tell ourselves that we are a good species, and we are on the right track, but we just need a little more time to reach our maturity. If we think about human beings as an “adolescent species” does that also mean that we should also think of the genocide of the American Indians as a college “panty raid,” slavery as a sort of fraternity hazing, and the whole environmental crisis as just a nasty hangover from doing too many Jagger-bombs at that kegger last night? Perhaps we should just say: “boys will be boys.” about these dark chapters in in our history, because these were just the youthful indiscretions of an adolescent species, and someday, we’ll grow out of it, get a job, and settle down.
Of course, if we actually applied what we know about science to this new myth, we’d realize that adolescence happens to individuals, not species. Individuals reach a stage where they no longer need the direct care and supervision of their parents, but have very little experience to draw from in their encounters in the real world. Adolescence never happens to a whole species at once. Every species is fully mature at the moment it evolves into existence. There are no “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” in nature.
Species evolve in response to the pressures and limitations placed on them by their environment. If the species survives, it is only because it’s particular adaptations are suited to the challenges of the environment they face at that moment. Species don’t evolve with adaptations suited to some future world, or with adaptations that take a few millennium to refine. The idea of a species in adolescence has no basis in science at all.
Every generation of every species comes with a fully mature set of time-tested adaptations that prepare it for survival within the limits set by its environment. That’s why you will never hear a biologist say, of an invasive species, for instance: “Well, Zebra mussels are an adolescent species. They want to get out and see the world, but we think that eventually they will return to their home range and settle down as the species matures.”
…or of an endangered species: “We think that the declining numbers of Northern spotted owls in Northern California forests is the result of the owls engaging in risky behavior. We think the owls are ‘acting out’ in reaction to losing so much of their habitat to logging. Spotted owls are an adolescent species, and we think this is just a temporary phase. We just need to give the owls some space, and let nature take its course.” Nor will you find any such nonsense in biology textbooks.
Why then, do you suppose, has this idea of an adolescent species, homo adolescence, if you will, has become such a widespread belief among Secular Humanists, who, because of their high regard for science, should know better?
It might be because Secular Humanists, like most people, prefer literary metaphor to real science. It might be because most Secular Humanists just haven’t examined that aspect of their belief system very closely, or it could be because Secular Humanists simply cannot face the fact that we are not looking at the youthful indiscretion of a species nearing maturity, but instead, we are witnessing the collapse of a suicidal culture, that is taking science, democracy, all of our beloved technology, and everything that makes us feel superior to the rest of nature, with it. The real answer, of course, is “all of the above.”
In truth, we’re a great species! We’re a mature, time tested species, that has achieved global distribution. There’s nothing wrong with us as a species. As a species, we’ve developed thousands of cultures, suited to life in the place they originated. We just happened to be born into one particularly destructive culture, that has already destroyed an alarming amount of the world’s biologic, as well as human, cultural diversity. There’s nothing wrong with us as people, but the way we live, the way we think, and the way we see ourselves in relationship to the rest of nature couldn’t be more wrong. If we hope to survive, as a species, our culture has got to change.
calling from Peru to report on the global climate summit taking place there. This is not the first global climate summit David and Jane have reported from. I recall that they walked-out of the last global climate summit they attended.
After flying 10,000 miles or so to Copenhagen, they “walked-out” in protest of the fact that governments around the world were not serious about addressing Global Climate Change, and that the delegates were just spinning their wheels while they enjoyed deluxe accommodations, succulent cuisine, and free-flowing refreshments. It became obvious to them, as well as to the majority of climate activists in attendance, that the governments of the world were not serious about stopping global climate change.
No shit, Sherlock. I could have told you that, and I didn’t have to fly half-way around the world to know it. Most people do not understand what government is, or how it operates, and they expect all kinds of crazy things from government, that government can never, and will never, do. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, people still go to their government to demand change.
Too many people think about governments in the same way that people think about God. They anthropomorphize government. They imagine that government has the presidents face and voice, and that congress is its heart, the CIA and FBI are its brain, and the Supreme Court, its conscience. They think about government as a functioning, conscious, and sentient being with a capacity for intelligence, compassion and intent.
You see how ridiculous this sounds when you put it in so many words. Here’s the problem: As humans, evolution has equipped us very well to think about people, as people, and to understand and empathize with them. We are also well equipped to think about, and talk about, things as objects, and to manipulate them very effectively. A government is neither a person, nor an object, and that makes it difficult for us to think about government, and to think about government effectively, we need a lot more information about it than we are likely stumble across in the course of our daily lives.
That means that if we want to understand government, it’s going to take work. Most of us already work too much, so most of us just tend to think of government as Big Brother, one single individual, immensely powerful, unbelievably stupid, and dangerously volatile, but as one person, nonetheless, and as a person who has the capacity to act intentionally, or at least in response to stimuli.
In reality, we should think of government as an enormous wriggling pile of maggots, feasting on putrefied waste. The maggots have a voracious appetite, and their waste putrefies everything it contaminates, which only makes more putrid goo for government to feast on. Government is made of thousands of people, all driven by their own personal interests, and everything they want must be sucked out of the waste and debris of exploited resources. Hence the maggot metaphor.
Government is a disease. The symptoms include war, environmental devastation, inequality, poverty, crime, etc. None of these are possible without government, and all of them flow directly from government. Whenever the people stand up to corporate exploitation, it’s always the government that shows up, in the form of cops, SWAT teams, or the National Guard, to make sure the road goes through, or the pipeline gets built, or that the Board of Directors can meet.
Global Warming is the fever from the disease called government, so don’t expect government to solve it. Government enables it, causes it, necessitates it. Government makes it all possible. So, when governments get together to try to address global climate change, it;s just another mass of feasting maggots. It’s disgusting. I can understand why they walked out, but once you walk out, you don’t go crawling back.
But David and Jane went crawling back, to follow the maggots to Lima, Peru, clocking another bundle of miles on their frequent-flyer cards, no doubt. David and Jane called KMUDs Monday Morning Magazine to let us know that the pile of maggots has not done anything substantial except wriggle hungrily and shit prolifically. Big surprise there.
They told us we shouldn’t count on governments to do anything, and that we should work here at home to fight global warming, and and that we should stop driving our F250 trucks so much.
We know. I’ll bet Lima’s lovely this time of year, I hope you saw the sights, but you know better now, right? I mean that little civics lesson has a big carbon footprint, so I hope you’ve really got it straight now.
Just in case, you’re still not sure. If you decide to attend the next global climate summit, in Paris, please spare us the call.
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