I've gotten around a bit.
I've rubbed shoulders with all sorts of kooks. True believers of the believingest kind, without much truth discernible in the final recipe. Holy rollers; snakehandlers. A few animists. Dopers, Buddhists, straight-up Leninists soldiering on long after Lenin lost interest. Knights of Columbus. People that wouldn't eat meat on Friday all the way to Sikhs that would stab you with their little dagger if you lit a cigarette next to them. People that speak Klingon.
But in all my travels I've never encountered a bigger bunch of intellectual anti-matter apocalyptic paranoid delusional wharrgarbll cult nonsense than this item from ABC News. Think about that. If David Koresh and Ted Kaczinski got married and started sharing notes, they couldn't come up with a less reasonable worldview than one of the three major networks serving as a news outlet to the american continent. ABC must be hiring interns from The Onion, because this is listed under Science and Technology:
It's an idea that most of us would rather not face -- that within the next century, life as we know it could come to an end. Our civilization could crumble, leaving only traces of modern human existence behind. It seems outlandish, extreme -- even impossible. But according to cutting edge scientific research, it is a very real possibility. And unless we make drastic changes now, it could very well happen. Experts have a stark warning: that unless we change course, the "perfect storm" of population growth, dwindling resources and climate change has the potential to converge in the next century with catastrophic results.
Well, they got it partially correct. I indeed "would rather not face" these "ideas," in the same way I don't want to face the ideas being yelled at passing cars by men who sleep on park benches and wet themselves regularly.
So people with misspelled signs, unkempt beards, and who wash themselves in the bubbler in the public park are my go-to guys for such apocalyptica. Who are the "experts" that ABC News goes to for their volcano-maiden advice?
"We have no new source of energy on the horizon that's currently capable of being developed on a large enough scale to replace the supply of oil in any near- term framework," says Michael Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College.
You know, when ABC doesn't even capitalize the words in your title at...snicker... Hampshire College, one wonders whether the ABC prole that wrote this is illiterate because they attended Hampshire College, or "professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College" is a title ol' Mike gave himself -- like your toddler declaring: "I'm Batman!" while wearing Spiderman pajamas. They must have other experts. The bushes in the parks are full of them. Let's see:
"Until we have a crisis of some kind, I don't think we're going to be motivated to make the really deep changes in the way we use energy, the technologies we use, the density of our cities, our travel patterns," says Thomas Homer-Dixon, a political science professor and author of "The Upside of Down."
Until we have a crisis, we won't have a crisis, according to a political science professor. Deep thinker. ABC always asks Poli-Sci professors about coal and oil. They just don't seem to ask them where exactly they're professors. Actually, I suspect they did, and thought it would be better not to mention that he's currently holding forth at The Waco Downstairs Stripmall Folding-Chair Academy of Arts, Sciences, Fill-Dirt, and Antique Bong Restoration. Who's up next?
"By 2030, two-thirds of the world's population will be under water stress," says Janine Benyus, science writer and founder of the Biomimicry Institute.
I'm flummoxed now. Not thirsty, but I am at sea. Biomimicry? Is that like Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, only this time with the end of the world being touted by a hand with a sock over it? I expect so. Reminds me of a public access cable show, with a white guy in dreadlocks yelling at a spot two feet to the left of the camera about the heavy poop that's about to hit the fan, broadcast at three AM on a Monday night.
But unlike most public access shows, this one's got a sponsor: Kool-Aid. Drink up, kids.
