What, me worry?
The world has always swarmed with concerns that are supposed to concern me, but don’t. In fact, I’m happy to report that I’m not worried about most of the worries we’re told to worry about.
Take, for example, “Global Warming.” It’s the worry du jour for the Shaggies and Saggies (male and female members, respectively, of the eco-loony set). In sixth grade I had a Saggy for a teacher, a half-witted greasy-haired shrew, who warned us of the dangers of–ready for this?–the coming Ice Age.
Oh, an Ice Age, eh? I wasn’t convinced. Everyone else seemed to be, though, and one class project was some sort of quasi-board game exercise where we–as future leaders of the world (yeah, right)–were to save Humanity from the ultimate big chill. I was too consumed with happy kid stuff–snowball fights, choir practice, and next summer’s business prospects for mowing lawns–to trouble my mind with phony baloney scare talk.
Now, of course, fear about the Ice Age has, well, chilled. The pendulum has swung and they’re worried about warming.
The sky has holes in it and it’s falling!
Anybody with a car (who is not a Shaggy or Saggy) is a polluting monster and is messing up the earth!
The ice caps will melt and our grandchildren will be born with gills!
Posh Spice will turn into a mermaid and her latex pants won’t fit anymore!
There isn’t any credible–credible, I say–evidence that mother earth is heating up, so let’s end that malarkey right now. Some bearded little freak on television, wearing coke-bottle glasses and speculating about the effect of global warming on the mating habits of the Amazon pinworm, is not credible evidence of global warming.
Sometimes the Shaggies will sport Indiana Jones style hats and safari shirts, but that doesn’t make them any more credible when they pontificate on things meteorological. If all these wanna’ be nature explorers were out exploring nature, they wouldn’t have the time to swish around Starbuck’s cafes and fret about global warming.
How about that killer blizzard that just rolled across the mainland’s heartland? It was so cold that the sunlight itself froze in mid-air. Where’s your global warming there? Huh?
In spite of all the screaming, the fear mongering, the scare tactics, and the sour-faced criticism of progress, humanity has never been better off than it is now. A middle-class American lives a lot better than any medieval king ever did. The fruits of progress, technology, and freedom don’t worry me a bit.
I’m no optimist, and I’m not glossing over the real problems that we’re facing. Still, it seems downright goofy to buy into worries at the wholesale level, just because it’s fashionable. It has a ring of farce to it, and the more they tell me to fret, the louder I’ll laugh.
