A Gerbil Story
By Blayze & Charles Ashurst
Here we are at the house of the Gerbil family. Here're Ferd and Berfil Gerbil and their litter of 12 pups. They live in a typical gerbil house in the gerbil suburbs. The gerbil pups love to watch their home theater, play video games, and then go outside and play on their many muscle cars. Each of the gerbil pups has his or her very own muscle car.
Vrooom vroom vromm. Ring ding ding ding. Ring ding ding ding. Waanng. Waanng. Waaaaaang.
Ferd Gerbil has a collection of muscle cars which he likes to race with his buddies.
Vrooom vroom vromm. Ring ding ding ding. Ring ding ding ding. Waanng. Waanng. Waaaaaang.
Berfil Gerbil enjoys shopping, looking for bargains at shopping malls, shopping for even better bargains at other shopping malls, and new clothes.
The Gerbil family was, until just recently, very crazy about cars. They especially liked big and powerful cars, but they also considered cars that were unusually big, cars that were unusually small, cars that were red, cars that were blue, cars that were green, cars that were yellow, cars that would go off-road, cars that would go on-road, as well as cars that would go both off-road and on-road. Then again, the Gerbils were quite often attracted to cars that met none of these criteria.
The only kind of cars the Gerbils had no interest in whatsoever were cars that got good gas mileage.
“Boring!” said the Gerbils.
Even when the Gerbils had no particular place to go, they enjoyed driving around and around and around all day long in their many many cars.
The Gerbil family was very very happy.
But then one day, an enormous dragon moved in next door.
Rooaar! Rooooooar!
The gerbil pups fled in terror.
“Mommy! Daddy! A dragon! A dragon!”
“Ferd, could you get out from in front of that TV and deal with this dragon?”asked Berfil Gerbil. “The gerbil pups need their outside time. And I need their outside time too.”
“I'll call in the First Armored Division of the Gerbil National Guard,”said Ferd Gerbil.
The gerbils dropped fighting robots with parachutes from their helicopters, and the gerbil helicopters began blasting away at the dragon.
Rat a tat tat tat. Baroom. Baroom. Rat a tat tat tat a. Rat a tat a. Kablooey. Kablooey kablooey kablooey.
“Sir,”said a gerbil soldier; “The dragon is unphased by the assault. It's only getting him mad!”
Roooooar! Roooooooooar! Rooooooar!
“Withdraw! Withdraw! Withdraw!” shouted the gerbil general.
Then, the gerbils decided to hire a consultant, Professor Gerbilstein.
“I have analyzed, categorized, digitized, quantized, assimilated, cross-associated, animated, and fully annotated your predicament extensively,” said Professor Gerbilstein, “and I have mathematically concluded that a military solution is not applicable to this specific situation. The problem is, see, this dragon is the consequence of your own behaviors. This dragon is the consequence of that gerbils have been changing the very makeup of the gerbil planet’s atmosphere from massive combustion of fossil carbon. You can't destroy the dragon. You have to change your behavior.”
“In what way do we need to change our behavior, professor Gerbilstein?” asked Ferd Gerbil.
“Well,” explained Professor Gerbilstein, “You need to reduce your carbon footprint. Your whole lifestyle which is derived from fossil carbon energy is all wrong and has to be redesigned from top to bottom.”
“Whooa. Whooa there,” said Ferd Berfil. “Hold the phone.”
“You call that smart, Professor Gerbilstein?” asked Berfil Gerbil. “ You may be a smart gerbil, but it's pretty clear to me that you've never had to solve the differential equations associated with raising 12 gerbil pups.”
“You hired me to tell you how it is,” said Professor Gerbilstein. “I'm telling you how it is.”
“Is not,” said Ferd Gerbil.
“Is too,” said Professor Gerbilstein.
“Isn't,” said Ferd Gerbil.
“Is,” said Professor Gerbilstein.
“Is not,” said Ferd Gerbil.
“It most certainly is,” said Professor Gerbilstein.
“It most certainly is not,” said Ferd Gerbil.
“Is too,” said Professor Gerbilstein.
“Is not,” said Ferd Gerbil.
But then Ferd Gerbil and Professor Gerbilstein were interrupted by the reappearance of the dragon, which had grown twice as big as before.
Rooaar! Rooooooar!
The gerbil pups fled in terror.
“Mommy! Daddy! A dragon! A dragon!”
“I'll call in the First, Second, and Third Armored Divisions of the Gerbil National Guard,” said Ferd Gerbil.
This time the gerbils launched a full out shock and awe assault attack on the dragon making use of their new transport plane designed to carry gerbil tanks into battle. But then the dragon shot a bolt of fire at the aircraft and caused it to crash.
Rat a tat tat tat. Baroom. Baroom. Rat a tat tat tat a. Rat a tat a. Kablooey. Kablooey kablooey kablooey.
“Sir, the dragon is unphased by the assault, and,” said a gerbil soldier “it's getting bigger and madder.”
Roooooar! Roooooooooar! Rooooooar!
“Withdraw! Withdraw! Withdraw!” shouted the gerbil general.
“Uh, Professor Gerbilstein. Professor Gerbilstein,” said Berfil Gerbil.
“Yes,” said Professor Gerbilstein.
“Understand I'm not saying you're right, Professor Gerbilstein,” said Berfil Gerbil. “Not by any stretch of the imagination am I saying you're right. But let's just say hypothetically speaking here, strictly hypothetically speaking here, just assuming there's a minute smidgeon of a possibility of your having a point, what should we do about this growing dragon?”
“Well,” said Professor Gerbilstein, “start with the simple things you can do to reduce your carbon footprint. Step one, put those power sipping gadgets on a diet. Let ‘em know who’s boss by plugging them into outlet strips you can switch off, and when they’re not being used to provide you mesmerizing entertainment beyond your power to resist, turn off the outlet strip.”
“Be more self-sufficient where you can,” said Professor Gerbilstein. “Plant a garden. Don’t buy sugar if you can get some honey from a friend who keeps bees. Produce your own energy too, with a solar panel. Stop using a clothes dryer,”
“Are you proposing I quit doing laundry, professor Gerbilstein?” said Berfil Gerbil. “I’m for that, but I’m not so sure others in the family will buy that.”
“No, see, what you do, see, instead,” said Professor Gerbilstein “ is you use a clothes drying rack like this.”
Professor Gerbilstein set up a folding clothes drying rack.
“Furthermore, you stop eating so much steak. What you need to do is to eat more crunchy granola.
“Gasp!!!!!!!!!!” said the gerbils.
“Not only do you need to eat more crunchy granola, you need to eat more locally produced crunchy granola.
Professor Gerbilstein removed a bag of Clinton's Wheat Shop crunchy granola from his re-usable shopping bag.
“Gasp!!!!!!!!!!” said the gerbils.
“ Doing this will reduce your carbon footprint on two fronts. One, you will be consuming food which involves much much less fossil carbon energy inputs. Two, you will be consuming food with which less fossil carbon energy is required for its transportation to your gerbil super market.
“ Upon completion of these low cost changes to your lifestyle, you will then need to move on to the more expensive investments in your gerbil pups' dragon-free future. I’m talking energy star appliances. I'm talking plug-in hybrids. I'm talking solar panels.
“Also, you will need to elect gerbil public officials who will commit to investments in renewable energy in a big way. I’m not talking about half measures here. And voting for such gerbils is only the first step. Then, you have to see to it that these gerbils then follow through with it.“
Well, so the gerbils went ahead and did what Professor Gerbilstein suggested.
The Gerbil family was very very happy.
The Beginning.
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Comments: 6
Some figures from the article:
We've warmed 0.8 deg C so far, and it'd coast about another 0.8 deg C if we stopped emitting carbon tomorrow.
World governments optimistically assume humanity could cope with about 2 deg C of warming.
"Scientists estimate that humans can pour roughly 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by midcentury and still have some reasonable hope of staying below two degrees. ("Reasonable," in this case, means four chances in five, or somewhat worse odds than playing Russian roulette with a six-shooter.)
CO2 emissions last year rose to 31.6 gigatons
at that rate, we'll blow through our 565-gigaton allowance in 16 years,
...the fossil fuel we're currently planning to burn – 2,795 [gigatons] – is higher than 565. Five times higher.
"We have five times as much oil and coal and gas on the books as climate scientists think is safe to burn."
"Think of two degrees Celsius as the legal drinking limit – equivalent to the 0.08 blood-alcohol level below which you might get away with driving home. The 565 gigatons is how many drinks you could have and still stay below that limit – the six beers, say, you might consume in an evening. And the 2,795 gigatons? That's the three 12-packs the fossil-fuel industry has on the table, already opened and ready to pour."
Like that is going to happen.
That is one outrageous a proposition. Then again, it was also an outrageous proposition that slave owners would be deprived of several billion dollars worth of human assets. Then as now, people do not depart with that kind of money without one heck of a fight, maybe even a civil war.
Wouldn’t it be worth a few tens of millions of dollars to shut us climate alarmists down once and for all with stuff NASA has sitting on the shelf gathering dust as in a program such as CLARREO?
Or, if NASA is all part of the UN black helicopter global conspiracy to deprive liberty-loving rednecks their Constitutional right to a free lunch in the form of an atmosphere you can dump your waste into for free, then how about a private initiative to build and launch the earth observatory. Free enterprise capitalists all chip in a few coppers to save free enterprise capitalism.
For some odd reason, I can’t get a bit of traction with that idea amongst our dyed in the wool just leave me alone free market capitalists.
Just suppose there is this tiny little possibility that climate alarmists are right. If so, then 2475 giga-dollars gets put into another perspective. Yes, 2475 giga-dollars is a lot of money. But what are habital planets going for these days? In this market, good luck finding a habital planet for anything less than a giga giga-giga dollars. There’s Mars but the place is real dump that needs a ton of fixing up.
If we climate alarmists are right, then we need to weigh the 2475 giga-dollars of lost fossil carbon energy against the costs of continuing on with business as usual. What would it cost to move our cities inland, re-invent agriculture, and absorb the refugees from countries that will vanish off the map? What will it cost to repair or replace eco systems upon which we depend for food? What is the market value of the biological services that will be degraded by greenhouse gas emissions?
Just as in the slavery case, it’s not like poverty is the only alternative to a system that is not sustainable. Just as there were alternatives to free human labor, more expensive alternatives at first but the cost differential came down over time, there are alternatives to fossil carbon energy. It’s not like the 2475 giga-dollars worth of fossil carbon energy is the only game in town. There is another game in town, renewable energy, and it works. Don’t tell me it’s impossible. People, ordinary working people, are doing it.
Bottom line, the economy was able to survive the transition from slavery to non-slavery. The transition was horrible but was that entirely the fault of abolitionists? Might the intransigence of the slavers have accounted for some of the needless preventable misery of that transition?
And, by show of hands, how many would like to return back to that way of doing business?
One thing is for sure. The more time we have to make such a transition, the better. Capitalism can cope with change. What capitalism doesn’t like is a shock, such as what generally happens when people prefer living in a fool's paradise to facing up to a challenge.