Going Green? Are You Serious?

If you live in the U.S., you may have noticed one of the bigger fads going around lately that I directly attribute to the “we deserved 9/11” nonsense being propagated by the feminine men in this country. It’s something like “Save the environment! Go green! Healthy! Endangered Animals! Hybrids!”. What a bunch of bullshit. I could go off on any number of these hippie topics, but I don’t have the time. Instead, let’s explore one that pisses me off the most: Conserving oil.

I mean, why should we conserve oil? Last I checked, oil is an nonrenewable natural resource, which means it will run out at some point. This will most likely happen between 2036 and 2050. We can’t change this. This leaves us with only one relevant question:

1. Do we want the oil to run out as quickly as possible, or as slowly as possible?

If mathematics has taught me anything, it’s taught me that looking at the extreme cases will provide you with an incredible amount of insight about a problem. This problem is no different. Let’s look at the two scenarios:

Oil runs out as slowly as possible

Let’s say American conservation efforts are successful at prolonging the lifespan of oil. Which countries does this help the most? Undoubtedly it’s developing countries that need this oil to modernize their countries and make their economies globally competitive. China is doing everything they can, including making deals with literally any corrupt/murderous oil rich country, in a desperate search for oil to fuel this desire. Remember, for every drop of oil you don’t use, China will use. This is so obvious to me that it needs to be repeated. But I never repeat myself, I’ll just underline it. Sweet ass.

If oil lasts longer, cost pressures on oil sold in the global market will be minimized. This will allow the Chinese to grow into a world superpower, maybe THE world superpower, in the most uninhibited way possible. As everyone who doesn’t already know will see during the Olympic Games this summer, this isn’t a good thing.

Oil runs out as quickly as possible

Pussies in this country might have you believe that using an excess amount of gasoline or home heating fuel is bad for your country. After all, this will bring up prices (unless they’re fixed somehow) and will reduce the total amount of oil left on the planet, which can only be bad. Didn’t you get the memo? We have to conserve everything natural!!!

But they are wrong. If we use as much oil as possible, we reduce the global oil supply. Would this cause a global recession? Maybe. But isn’t that almost inevitable? And the U.S. would be much better equipped to handle oil running out before it was projected to than other countries would be. Well, at least better equipped than China would be. They’d be fucked. Remember, somebody is going to use the oil and it might as well be us.

I think it would be in our best interest if oil ran out when we were at our strongest. Keeping oil around allows developing nations to get stronger, so we would like the oil to run out as quickly as possible. And don’t even hit me with that “it’s better for the world as a whole” nonsense either.

And what would we do when there was no oil left, you say? Necessity is the mother of invention. And under those circumstances, if you don’t think a Manhattan Project for the energy crisis could be completed by the world’s greatest minds, you’re kidding yourself.

Side note, if you want to know why the U.S. is more dependent on foreign oil than ever, look at the following graph. Domestic oil production peaked in 1970 and has been falling ever since:

Hm, now that I’m thinking about it, maybe I gave China a little too much credit. Maybe they’re just another fatally flawed superpower-wannabe. On the other hand, I’d rather not risk China taking over. Especially since Thai, Korean, and Vietnamese girls are hotter than Chinese girls. In any case, conserving oil is at best delaying the inevitable. Let’s just use it all and get to the point already.

Getting Defensive: Part 2

I’ve been thinking about it for most of the last couple of hours, and I’m pretty sure now that getting defensive in the face of criticism is the worst way to go. It’s unclear to me whether crying is a better option. Probably not. Anyway, I’ve noticed that most people who are members of any arbitrary group get defensive when the group (it’s purpose or existence) gets criticized. The level of defense, something I’m going to measure in Fury Units (FUs), is directly and exponentially proportional to the amount of time and energy the person has spent becoming a member and staying a member of the group.

For the purposes of our scientific analysis, we’ll look at 3 groups who are representative of groups who get defensive when challenged in our society: Environmentalists, Religious Radicals, and Animal Rights Activists. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get started. Let’s kick things off.

The Environmentalists:

I mean, holy fuck do they get defensive. Environmentalists have a very strong self-image as people who do what’s best for nature, which is fine. I really like nature, it’s pretty and it smells nice, which is also a description of girls I like. However, if you can see through the recycling bins and marijuana smoke, you’ll see that most of them have other priorities. You probably heard about the front page story in the New York Times last year about how the #1 reason people bought a Toyota Prius was ‘It makes a statement about me’. Oh the vanity! And that’s only the tip of the melting iceberg.

If we take that one data point and extrapolate it to make a broad statement about environmentalists (which is sheer brilliance, by the way), we can see how this commitment of environmentalists to maintain a self-image of someone who is unselfish and unwasteful (not a word) directly leads to them being defensive. Saving the environment isn’t as important to environmentalists as proving that the rest of us gas-burning, fat-people-hating Americans are wrong. Most environmentalists live in cities and tell people in Alaska that they can’t dig for oil on their land. Most of these people will never go to Alaska, I don’t get it. But we’re not here to get emotional, we’re here to study this group scientifically. Let’s get to the conclusion.

Getting defensive is easier for environmentalists than admitting the contradiction that, by and large, they aren’t outdoors people. Defensive Intensity (1-10): 6 FUs.

The Religious Radicals:

Here’s a fun group. The only thing they have in common with each other is the idea that everybody else is wrong. And instead of it just being Team A vs Team B like the environmentalists, there’s like 20 different groups and they all get defensive when their beliefs get questioned. Personally, I think we should just have a beauty contest to settle who’s right. Wouldn’t God make the right people prettier?

To make things even better, there’s a whole separate group called Atheists who assert that all of these groups are fundamentally wrong, all the people in the groups are ignorant blind fools, and they go around spending time preaching this fact that everybody is wrong. I don’t get why they waste their time on something they think is irrelevant. What a happy world we live in.

As I’m sure you’ve seen, the actual beliefs of the religions involved often take a backseat to proving that one group is more right than another group. I don’t get it. Well, I guess it’s good if you like arguing. Let’s just get to the conclusion.

Religious Radicals get defensive because if other religions are right, it creates a huge contradiction, it means their religion is wrong, and it invalidates their belief structure. Defensive Units (1-10): 8 FUs.

The Animal Rights Activists:

Here’s another fun group. From what I can gather, the idea that animal suffering is equal in importance to human suffering is central to their argument. I hope the rescue personnel don’t feel that way if I get in a car crash and I have a dog in the car, and they have to choose between me and the dog to pull from the burning car.

But the rest of their ideas are like: instead of testing chemicals on animals, we should test them on homeless people instead. I can see that, that makes sense. And wearing fur? Yeah, I guess that does seem a little unnecessary unless you killed the animals yourself. Not eating meat? I don’t know, that seems a little shortsighted. Don’t those wheat and soy combines chop up animals when they harvest the crops? And animals eat each other every day, I don’t feel bad for them. I bet a lot of my ancestors got eaten by animals and they’d want me to get some revenge for them. In fact, I’m dedicating my next chicken sandwich to a bird flu victim. We can’t let those birds win!

And why so they get so defensive, so emotional about it (PETA does at least, but there are better run groups out there)? Because they feel that unless they change the minds of everyone else, their cause is meaningless. I guess that’s really at the center of getting defensive: you feel like you have to change other people’s minds. And that brings us to Hero Adage #2: Nobody gives a shit about your problems, get used to it. But back on the subject, the conclusion:

Animal Rights Activists get defensive because they know that getting everyone to accept their beliefs is literally impossible. When you combine that with the fact that their cause is questionably important at best when compared to other causes, they’re forced to accept the fact that they’ve wasted a large chunk of time and energy on this or they get defensive instead. That’s probably why PETA compares animal suffering to the Holocaust instead of admitting to themselves that the vast majority of people will never care. Defensive Intensity (1-10): 9.5 FUs (I know there has to be a 10 group out there).