As Makai and I took our walk this morning down our lengthy driveway, I saw in front of me a great white way, again. I have walked through way too much of the “white death” so far this winter to be concerned about global warming. In fact I could do with about twenty-five more degrees of the global warming stuff right about now!
Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve been green since before green was cool and as has oft been said, “it ain’t easy being green.” Mrs. Commish and I have farmed organically since we were married just after the little ice age ended. You remember that one don’t you? Remember back in the 70’s when we were warned about the threat of global cooling and the real possibility of once again becoming snowball earth? I remember because we were building our home then and were advised to put in one of those new-fangled gadgets called a heat pump. It ran on electricity and “took heat right out of the air” to save money and the environment. Besides with the coming ice age we could be sure that an oil delivery truck would not get up our driveway in the winter, propane would work but the same delivery problem existed, and natural gas was not available. So a clean, cheap heat pump was the answer. It has been such a great answer that if I was a landlord I would be put in prison for keeping the house so cold. How does 52 sound? Well our thermostat is set there and our bill is still $250 or more each month, so you better believe that I really would appreciate a little global warming right about now.
I know I am being overly simplistic. Climate trends take centuries to play out. I wonder if a simple goat herder like myself realizes this then why don’t our Elected Betters and their scientific brain trusts realize this? Could it be that there is money (more “green”) to be made if we rush to sell carbon credits and alternative technologies to the sheepeople? Carbon credits sure sound similar to those collateralized sub-prime instruments that our financial whiz bangs and our Elected Betters made fortunes on as all of my goat herder friends lost their portfolios. So I admit that I am just a bit skeptical of Big People telling me what is best for me.
Big People now tell me to recycle. As I said before, this is nothing new to me. I collected and returned aluminum cans and every year or two Mrs. Commish, Gwaltney and I would cash them in. We enjoyed the process since we always were paid in $2 bills. Mrs. Commish and Gwaltney would pocket their new-found wealth (maybe $8 or $10 each) and take mine and a little extra to some local café and we would enjoy a nice lunch. Save the earth and have lunch. Perfect. Then my Elected Betters tell me that my two trash pickups are going to be one for recycling and one for trash. One week for paper and the next week for bottles and cans. Oh yeah, the items to be recycled must be put in blue plastic bags. The first week I put my cans and bottles out in blue bags and animals got to it and I had to pick up my recyclable stuff from the woods and put it out again in two weeks. The next week my paper was neatly tied and stacked at the bottom of my hill. It was not picked up because of some reason that I can no longer recall but I do remember having to once again pick up a lot of the trash scattered in my woods. The following week is once again cans. This time I put them in blue bags and put the blue bags in a trash can for “protection.” WRONG. Recyclables are to be picked up in blue bags, not blue bags in trash cans. The end result of my Elected Betters solution for recycling is that now I put out everything in my once a week trash pickup and on recyle day I sleep in.
As I see it, all of these Big People ideas stem from a belief in a Malthusian catastrophe. (For those of you who went to public school – like me—google Robert Malthus yourself.) So in order to avoid regressing to a subsistence level we must do all of these silly thing, even if they don’t work, and do them now. All of these “solutions” really do not address the problem – there are too many people. There I’ve said it. Now we need a solution for too many people and the rest of our problems would self-correct naturally (and what could be more green than something happening “naturally”). The solution you ask, well The Commish recommends a new tax, something I never thought I would advocate. Using the proven principle that subsidizing something gets you more of it and taxing something produces less of it, then, simply put, in order to get less people let’s tax sex!
As a side benefit to producing fewer people – remember if you tax something you get less of it – our Elected Betters should realize a bonanza in this new revenue stream. This new revenue source may be enough to lower our other taxes. Right. As I see it there could be a real “marriage tax” and we could fill out forms like Census Data and then we would get a Coupling Tax Bill in the mail. Or, we could do it like withholding taxes and pay in advance. Our Elected Betters would honestly be pimps and no longer could we complain about them “pimping for Wall Street” or “being a pimp for Big Pharma.” Since enough is never really enough for Big People, future adjustments to the Sex Tax Code could include a Value Added Tax for prostitutes and maybe an excise (Sexcise?) tax on massages.
No need to thank me, The Commish is glad to help with his solutions for a greener world.
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