The One Thing Big Oil Can't Beat

Killin' stuff has never been so fun!
Want your kids to grow up "green bonded"?
Get 'em the new Deer-Killin' Barbie!

Greg:

Hi, it's me, your dirt-hugging tree-licking brother. You and Marie sell dirt, right? ("Real estate", okay, whatever.) So I imagine you guys are out in the toolies every once in a while selling psuedo-ranches and mini-mansions to jodhpur-clad horse-weenies - people who consider themselves "outdoorsy" because they circumnavigated Lake Tahoe in their Escalade. Okay, so, tell me what you think of this. I was recently introduced to the term "green bonded" by a writer from The Mountaineers. In the piece I read, he posited that people who spend time in the outdoors become bonded to nature and the outdoors, and are thus more likely to back ecologically-minded legislation. Interesting thought, however I believe there needs to be an allowance made for the way in which you become bonded to the outdoors. For instance, do you become bonded to the outdoors through hiking and backpacking, or through chasing down pregnant caribou with a snowmobile?

I get catalogs from a whole slew of outdoors outfitters, among them REI and Cabelas, which is just like REI except that it's outdoor gear for people who like to kill stuff. Take both catalogs, put them side by side, and turn over the idea that both sets of folks are "green bonded". By the way, believe it or not, I don't have anything against hunting (except that I wouldn't do it). I do have a problem with leghold traps and high-powered rifles. I say that if you're of a mind to eat some deer, you oughtta at least be able to physically dominate it. At least be able to beat it at leg-wrestling. That's all I ask. Speaking of physical domination, certain Great Plains tribes used to get two guys to chase a deer down until it dropped from exhaustion, and then they'd hold a bag over its head until it smothered. (It can be done. Deer are built for short bursts of speed. If you get one boxed in between two Kenyan long-distance runners, the deer'll be sucking wind and crying uncle in no time.)

Which brings me to global warming (didja see how I did that - pulled a logical flea-flicker?), and how I hear the Big Oil is running a campaign to discredit my most beloved green-bonded tree-hugging brother, Al "Stiff As A Larch" Gore. Short story: Big Oil (or Greasy Bastards as I like to call them) is running some TV ads to say that the science behind Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" is turds. So yeah, they're fuckers. Not surprising. They think that people will just go "Oh - I see. It's turds. Lemme go back to flaming off this thirty-gallon barrel of sweet light crude I've got in the backyard."

Here's why this smear campaign will never work: COGNITIVE SCIENCE. The brain is really interested in self-preservation, so much so that it is impossible for any living thing to suppress its own startle response. S'a'fact. You can't do it no matter how much weed you smoke while watching "Gilligan's Island". Believe me, I've tried. As organisms, we're way into staying alive by way of staying alert. That's why news stories of danger and tragedy are so engaging and compelling to the human psyche. We believe that we have somehow avoided danger by being informed of it, even if it happened on the other side of the globe. Add to that the fact that every bit of weather we get is now underscored in common conversation by "because of global warming", and you have an indelible connection. Hurricane Katrina? Global warming. Floods in France? Global warming. Pizzlies invading Los Angeles? Global warming and photo op with Al Gore. So yeah, so Greasy Bastards, Inc., will spend all this money saying, "It's poop-science!" and then the next big storm we get (which will be about twenty minutes from...thousand one...thousand two...now) will completely erase from every human mind whatever Big Oil was blathering about. There is not a single goddamn thing anyone can do to stop humans from being afraid of the weather.

Don't get me wrong. That's a good thing. People should be afraid of the weather, considering how many people get killed by it every year. I believe that "green bonded" or no, folks who were otherwise uninterested in the outdoors will become keenly interested in the short-term future. For the first time in modern history, they will come to understand that their personal survival depends on that vast expanse outside their window.

I'd like to hear what you think of all that. Oh yeah! Totally off the subject, but only marginally related: a zero-energy home that doesn't look like a spaceship piloted by stinky hippies AND only costs a buck-two-ninety-five to build! Smoke that, Big Oil!

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus