BY
PLANET EVANS
FOR PREVENTING THE LESS IMPORTANT PEOPLE OF THE WORLD
FROM BECOMING A BURDEN ON THEIR LEADERS IN PARIS,
AND FOR MAKING THEM BENEFICIAL TO POLICY
IT IS A MELANCHOLY OBJECT to those who travel this wondrous globe, when they see streets, buildings, and towns devastated by extreme weather events, crowded with families that include three, four, or six children, all in the same rags they wore before evacuation and importuning every passerby and news crew for rebuilding funds and assistance.
These people, instead of being able to lead normal lives or work for an honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in repairing the homes and neighborhoods they require to raise their helpless infants, who, as they grow up, produce vast quantities of the very greenhouse gases which landed them in this dilemma, or leave their dear native country to fight for control of more fossil fuel supplies, or fall for campaigns aimed to warm their bleeding little hearts into eliminating research for viable alternatives.
I think it is agreed by all parties that the prodigious number of climate change victims is in the present deplorable state of the global economy a very great additional grievance to our gravely concerned leaders in Paris; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making them sound and useful for the purposes of agreed policy, and to whatever indiscernible ends it is intended to serve, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the planet.
But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for those left homeless by devastating events; it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the entirety of human breeders and consumers causing an ever-increasing challenge to the Earth's capacity to support them.
As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of other projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation. It is true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by the burning of fossil fuels for a, please excuse the term, solar year, with little other energy input; at most not above the value of average adult consumption or 20 barrels of oil annually, but it is while they are still minors that I propose to provide for them and the parents, who have chosen to burden the environs with their birth and rearing, in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon society, or wanting electricity and power for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the generation of same for many happy millions.
Fortunately, I need not delve into a lengthy elaboration of my numbers and calculations in order to defend my proposal, as others have already done the hard work and hammered out the logistics for us. We need only summon the moral fortitude necessary to conduct a lottery to determine who will or will not serve the greater good, and then put the, by now, well-known plan below into action.
Finally! An energy supply all of our leaders can get behind, and work into effective zero-emission policy without reservation or hesitation! One which simultaneously cuts and meets demands. And, surely, one that can still be provided at a handsome price to the rest of us free rangers lucky enough to have been exempted by the lottery, thereby satisfying the interests those who gathered in Paris recently always keep foremost in their thoughts.
Now, please note that if providing people with a familiar dreamland they can enjoy while powering our society contrasts with idealistic notions of fairness and humanity you hold dear, and maybe even triggers your moral outrage, I do have a fallback suggestion which provides a much simpler and—ahem—swifter resolution.
We toss the least productive society members into furnaces that generate electricity for the rest of us. Start with the deceased, then move on to prisoners, and ultimately make our way up to art history majors (thank you, Click and Clack). Now, it can be argued that the incineration of children and grown adults, alike, having required both above and below-ground energy inputs to reach their individual states of maturation, will still initially contribute to the imbalancing of the carbon cycle, but surely the benefits of reducing population in the long run will far outweigh the production of emissions in the short term.
I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal or financial interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my world, by enabling profits for the wealthy. I have no one by which I can propose to get a single penny by either farming their BTUs or selling them to a cogeneration facility; being unmarried, childless, and having every intention of staying just so.
(For those interested in the original: linkie)
