Opinion: fuck it, you’ve done enough to stop climate change

What’s that? Just going to sit back and put your feet up for a little while? Sure. That’s fine.

I mean, look at all you’ve done to stop the nigh-inevitable destruction of the human race due to man-made climate change.

Look at that recycling bin. Go on, look at it. You did that. That’s your contribution.

Oh, sure, the council gave you the bin, and they’re the ones that empty it, but it doesn’t work without you. You’re the one who drags it out to the curb every other week, apart from when you forget. You even put recyclable stuff in there, when you can be bothered.

Yeah. No-one can take that away from you.

Is that a burger? Man, absolutely. Treat yourself. You’ve earned it. Think of all the meat-free Mondays that you’ve taken part in. You ate a middling vegetarian chilli for dinner this week. And maybe you had a chicken salad sandwich for lunch but, as you so eloquently argued, that meat was already bought and paid for.

I mean, what were you going to do? Just throw it away? You don’t have a compost bin, and God knows the damage that binning that chicken salad club would have done to the environment. This way, you get some use out of it, and it gets recycled naturally.

Apart from the packaging, but you’re right: it was raining outside last night, and you’d have got soaked if you’d leaned out of the kitchen door to throw it in the bin.

On an unrelated note, I see that wall of photographs of BP higher-ups is still pretty free from red crosses and newspaper cuttings.

Oh, I’m sure it’s difficult to get into position. After all, the scope on that rifle only offers you 18X magnification. You’d have to be in the same city to get the job done: it’s a lot of risk.

And you’re right: they do have families. Imagine the oily tears running down their children’s faces when they saw Daddy’s head explode into a red mist on the news. You couldn’t live with yourself if you did that.

No: someone else will get around to it. They’re killing the planet, after all, drip by black drip. Surely someone is going to do the decent thing.

No, you sit back and rest. It’s nice and warm in here, after all. Getting warmer, too.

You’ve done enough.

Featured image: Pxfuel

The USA might have a new president but there is one thing you cannot forget

There are 48 million kangaroos in Australia and only 3,518,552 people in Uruguay.

If the kangaroos decided to invade Uruguay, each member of the population would have to defeat over 13.6 kangaroos each. Of course, only able bodied adults would be able to fight and so the true number of kangaroos needing defeating per capita would be much higher.

A large male kangaroo can be over 2m tall and weigh 90kg. Do not be fooled however: that 90kg is pure muscle. Adult male kangaroos will box each other until one falls down, gives up, or dies. These savage beasts will eviscerate a person with their razor-sharp claws if they perceive them as a threat to their young, their food, or their God-given territory in South America (specifically the country bordered by Argentina and Brazil).

It is easy to see why the kangaroos might try and take over their Promised Land. Uruguay ranks as one of the most progessive countries in the world, and the most in South America. The production, sale, and consumption of cannabis is legal. Same-sex marriage is legal. Abortion is legal. Perhaps most importantly, Uruguay is ranked first in South America for press freedom, much to the relief of this writer should he need to flee the UK.

Some might have thought that the USA and the world would have become completely perfect overnight with the inauguration of President Biden. The truth is that Uruguayans live under the constant threat of having to fight over 13 kangaroos each to the death in order to retain control of their country.

The worst bit is that they might very well have to do it alone. Unfortunately, in 2018, Unión de Naciones Suramericanas (Union of South American Nations) collapsed after a suggestion from then-Uruguayan-president Tabaré Vázquez to expand the common-defense remit of the Consejo de Defensa Suramericano (Council of South American Defense) to include invasion of any member state by foreign marsupials.

At the end of the day, we all know the mankind-macropod military action will happen at some point. One can only hope that both sides respect the Geneva Convention, if only in order to avoid the brutality witnessed in the last war against Australian wildlife, the Emu War.

NASA declares 2020 “hottest year on record” – 2020 says it’s “flattered but uncomfortable”

Maybe it’s in the name of expanding scientific knowledge that the scientists at NASA continue to do science. Or maybe, in light of recent declarations, it’s an elaborate scheme to produce effective chat-up lines for abstract entities.

When NASA’s latest climate report concluded that 2020 was the “hottest year on record,” it was initially assumed that this was meant in a negative way. After all, it simply adds more evidence of the progression of global warming, which is the second greatest existential threat of our time (behind, of course, the greatest threat: hugely high-profile reactionary conservative voices being silenced on every single platform except from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Sky News, the BBC, and the internet as a whole).

It would be fair to look at this report as a grim indicator of exactly how crushingly real the threat is of a total environmental collapse within our lifetimes; a kind of tourist information point on our descent through the circles of hell. It wouldn’t be difficult to read this report and be reminded of the unstoppable ticking of nature’s atomic clock as it travels closer and closer to midnight.

It would be hard to avoid these thoughts, that is, if it weren’t for the fact that the year 2020 put out a response tweet to this article, explaining how it was “flattered” to have been so complimented by the US space organisation. 2020, renownedly a prominent Twitter user, had apparently “never been talked about in a nice way before,” and was “warmed by the message.”

NASA then complicated relations with the year by adding that “The Australian wildfires during the first half of the year burned 46 million acres of land, releasing smoke and other particles more than 18 miles high in the atmosphere, blocking sunlight and likely cooling the atmosphere slightly.”

When asked “what are you trying to say?” by a tweeting 2020, the scientists replied: “Basically, you would’ve been even hotter if you didn’t have a fiery bush down under.”

But the debacle over this report is a much larger problem, one that could possibly bring an end to NASA altogether – many are disgusted by the fact that NASA could engage in such an exchange or even think about producing such a romantic report on 2020’s supposed hotness, given the fact that 2020 is only one year old.

“Shit, man, what would you have said?” asks BP representative

Following a Federal District Court case in which the world’s five largest oil companies admitted to having a noteworthy role in climate change, a spokesperson for BP asked reporters, “just what the fuck you’d have said in our position.”

Addressing a press gathering, Communications Officer Tom Wilcox stated, “Look, we got the findings back in the eighties. And sure, it was some real scary shit: rising sea levels, regular forest fires, climate refugees. Well, you know what else is scary? Letting billions of tonnes of oil just sit in the ground after spending all that money on technology built specifically to get it out.”

When asked what measures BP now planned to take to reverse climate change, Wilcox said, “Let me be clear, here: no-one regrets the absolute raw pounding that Mother Earth has taken more than BP. But let’s be real here: we made our deal with the devil and the price was the future of the whole human race and your grandchildren’s lives. After all, we can’t have it said that BP broke a contract; what would the world think of us then?”

Wilcox concluded by refuting the widely-held belief that there needs to be sterner consequences for companies that contribute to climate change. “I’m sure that the sight of oil executives’ bodies twisting in the wind, suspended by hempen rope, would make everyone feel a lot better, but that’s not going to get you out of this giant apocalypse-shaped hole that we’ve put you in. If you ask my advice, the world has more important things to focus on than playing the blame game.”

Shell executives blame worsening climate change on “public’s inhuman lust for oil”

The oil company Shell today released a statement laying the blame for the increasingly severe effects of climate change at the feet of what they described as “our loyal and valued customer base”.

The memo, received by The Toon Lampoon this morning, stated the belief that climate change would “not be nearly so advanced” had human society “had the moral strength and fortitude to wean itself from Mother Earth’s oil-dripping teat”.

“It is astonishing,” the memo went on to say, “that the planet has been content to let its desire, nay, its monstrous appetite for oil force us to mine and drill the very planet that we call home for its slick, black sustenance. For decades now, we have been forced to stand by, hands figuratively tied, as the human race has pressed its filthy, bloodstained money onto us in return for our unquestioning collaboration in its mission to poison the very air we breathe.”

Shell was one of several major oil companies to admit the role that it had played in the current climate crisis, though the organisation insists that full responsibility rests upon the shoulders of its consumers.

“It’s supply and demand, nothing more,” the memo concluded. “In one powerful, overwhelming roar, the people of the world have demanded oil. And we, we unhappy few, have been fated by either birth, or position, or CV application, to supply our fellow man with the devil’s own black, poisonous piss. We condemn the climate crisis and we condemn those who have caused it: ordinary human beings like yourselves.”

Oil totally fine, new report suggests

Greta Thunberg who?

Oil actually good for the environment, scientists confirm

Never mind which scientists.

You know what I order at the bar? A big old cup of oil

What do you order, liberal? A cup of hydroelectric?

Some oil is from American fossils, so if you hate oil, you hate freedom

How’s it feel, Bin Laden?

Heartwarming: BP oil spill gives bird an all-black makeover for free

BP Oil have selflessly given a bird off San Francisco Bay, California a chic, all-black makeover free of charge.

So dedicated were BP to their avian friend’s new look, they poured all 58 000 gallons of oil from their tanker into the estuary where the bird was perched. If there’s one thing the multi-million pound clean-up effort has proven, it’s that you really can’t put a price on fashion.

Except, of course, the price to the environment and taxpayer, but don’t worry about that. What are you, a Communist?