An Environmental Book Review

The Apocalypse Cometh

Here’s a joke for you: What do you call a book that takes up half the shelf space in your den, and is still smoking from the reader’s last attempt to wade through it while seated too close to the fireplace?

Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

At ten thousand pages, give or take, or in my case seventeen petrochemically produced CDs, Thomas Friedman has created a carbon footprint capable of sapping the entirety of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves. Deb spent seventy bucks on the bored driver’s version, and I want her money back.

It isn’t that I doubt the veracity of this widely respected journalist’s research. In fact I believe all of it, as much of it as I’ve managed to wade through at least, and therein smolders the problem. In Friedman’s Herculean effort to unearth every last scientific fact on the perilous state of our planet, his argument has overlooked the most important one: the attention span of the reading public. Further, in an earnest attempt to convince us of the immensity of our predicament, he has grossly overestimated our capacity to comprehend scales based on the infinitesimal. This is why Americans have collectively shed more tears over the unplugging of one human vegetable than we have for all the souls nuked at Nagasaki. We’re kind of fickle that way.

Friedman would have done the world a favor to instead publish a booklet entitled We’re So Screwed! At the very least he would’ve spared the chunk of rainforest he has denuded with his present book. Here would be the outline:

Page 1…. We’re So Screwed

Page 2 … Here’s Why We’re So Screwed

Paged 3… And I Mean Really, Really Screwed

Page 4… I Told You We Were Screwed

Page 5… Have A Nice Day

Shock and awe do not empower; they paralyze. When I make the token effort to pick up after some slob in my neighborhood, I’m not kidding myself. What does one gum wrapper actually mean in the giant scheme of things? But the underlying principle causes us to forge on, with the hope that the snowball has a chance of one day leveling the ski chalet.

But not anymore. A snowball doesn’t have a chance in the torched underworld Mr. Friedman has so compellingly mapped out. His statistics prove conclusively that I am what the enemies of conscientious conservatorship would label me: an idiot tree-hugger.

I don’t know if Friedman believes he is waking the world up with his clinical compulsion to hammer home the breadth of the problem, or if he’s simply hawking wood pulp. Around halfway through the tome, which is where I met my dead end, he refers to an analysis made by a pair of scientists who’ve created a pie chart composed of carbon-related “wedge” issues threatening the planet. It all starts out fun (who doesn’t like pie?) and then heads for the leach field.

Of the fifteen wedges listed, we are asked to pick our own “easy eight” to enact were we to desire to save our world. But before we are able to sink our teeth into the challenge, we are told it would take a miracle to enact just one. A miracle? What kind of miracle? A hopeful miracle, or the kind of miracle that only happens on moronic TV shows and in our own childish reverie?

While we are pondering our odds at success, he claims it would be “the miracle of miracles” to make only eight of the fifteen wedge solutions happen. And they must be enacted immediately. If we delay, the task will soon be impossible. Impossible? How impossible? Like winning the Lotto jackpot impossible?

Mr. Friedman’s impossibly urgent message reminds me of another human conundrum that hasn’t gone away. The issue of compassionate euthanasia was for a time championed by a well-meaning physician who came off looking like a nut job. The fellow’s name was Jack Kevorkian, and his public persona undermined his cause. It’s more than a shame when a legitimate message is spoiled by the delivery. Thanks for the sermon, Mr. Messiah. Now leave me to my own personal soap opera.

Friedman should have saved seventy-two point four per cent of his stats for an appendix, or the Apocalypse, whichever came first. I’d give the Apocalypse even odds. In fact, I think an apocalypse is the solution. It’s been a long observed characteristic of humans that we subscribe to the “Not-In-My-Back-Yard” policy of problem solving. The poop has to pile up on the porch so high that it’s oozing through the screen door. That’s when folks break out the pooper-scoopers in earnest.

We aren’t there yet, so maybe, just maybe, it makes sense to continue to squander what we have in order to jump-start the recovery. Let’s face it: an entire political party and its voting followers don’t believe any of this Goremania. They need to swim through the stuff on the way to their Hummers for it to register.

Our boat trip introduced us to just such apocalyptic conditions, as boats do by their nature. On a thirty-four foot sailing vessel, if you adhere to Coast Guard rules and regulations, you are living amid the filth you create. Flush that toilet, and you’re filling a very small plastic reservoir strategically located right underneath your sleeping quarters. That’s what I said. So there, I got a boat reference in.

Back on land, I intend one day to pull out CD #17, just to see if Friedman has saved a deus ex machina for us there. With the other sixteen I plan on assembling a shiny mobile for the next arriving infant selfishly spawned by irresponsible friends.

Maybe I haven’t given up all hope yet.