She’s a selfish, greedy, dangerous, pollution-spewing, globe-warming, planet-killing bitch.
But you probably call her “Mother.”
While Sheryl Crow wastes time counting squares and Al Gore runs for president on the “Friend Of The Polar Bear” platform, the true environmental activists are getting to the root cause of the coming global climate disaster: dear old Mom.
A week before Mother’s Day, the (London) Sunday Times ran the heartwarming headline “Having Large Families Is An Eco-Crime!” The story quotes something called the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), claiming that any family with more than two kids is crushing the earth beneath their carbon footprints.
OPT co-chairman John Guillebaud puts the blame right where it belongs: “The greatest thing anyone … could do to help the future of the planet would be to have one less child,” he says.
For my lovely bride, The Warden, mother of four, this raises the delicate question of which two we should, er, “recycle.”
Blaming mom for global warming on the week of Mother’s Day may seem cruel — not to mention a bit tasteless — but there’s a certain undeniable logic in it. After all, moms create people, and people create dangerous greenhouse gases all the time (it’s called “exhaling,” Mr. Gore), with or without the benefit of an SUV.
And who drives SUVs? C’mon, folks, they’re called “Soccer Moms” for a reason…
Why SUVs are viewed as uniquely dangerous to the environment remains a mystery. Communities from California to Massachusetts have proposed taxing them, restricting their use, and even outright bans, all in the name of global warming. This might make sense if the SUV-slayers weren’t driving to pick up their free-range chicken at the local organic markets in their Volvo station wagons and high-performance BMWs.
But we punish SUVs, which, in turn, punishes moms. SUV haters claim that “nobody needs an SUV,” while moms drive them because: a) they can’t fit all their kids in a Prius; and b) even if they could, they don’t want the only thing between their beloved children and an oncoming truck to be 13 ounces of recycled aluminium and a “No War For Oil!” bumper sticker.
And yet, what is mom doing by protecting her children, other than harboring another generation of SUV-driving suburbanites to vote Republican and consume hormone-drenched dairy products?
Or, as Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, puts it: “Human beings are a virus!” People are “the AIDS of the Earth!” His plan is for the world’s population to go from its current 6 billion down to a “sustainable” population of 1 billion.
And who stuck us with these 5 billion carbon-emitting losers (by which I mean the 5 billion that doesn’t include me, or course)?
Thanks, Mom.
Not everyone agrees with these environmentalists. Some academics have noticed how America’s population and life expectancy have risen simultaneously over the past 100 years. Some economists record the general tendency for nations to prosper as their populations grow. Mark Steyn, author of the outstanding book America Alone, has written about the coming economic and cultural disaster in Europe as their birth rates plummet to unsustainable lows.
Meanwhile, some mothers go so far as to defend themselves by claiming to be raising healthy, well-loved children who go on to become productive, problem-solving citizens.
Of course that’s what the moms say. What else would we expect from evil, virus-spreading planet killers?
Here’s the ugly, hidden truth of “Mother’s” Day, a holiday so perverse only a nation of self-absorbed capitalist swine could celebrate it: too many moms have had too many kids. And if we’re ever going to reach our Kyoto targets (currently set at “ruining our economy and driving millions into poverty”), we’ve got to lighten the Earth’s load. Right?
If you agree — if you understand that there are too many people doing too much damage to a too-fragile Earth — then perhaps this Mother’s Day can be your day to act.
Messrs. Guillebaud and Watson may or may not have mothers still with us today, but surely it’s not too late for them to undo the damage done when they were brought into the world. And if your mom had “too many” children, it’s time for you to do the same.
To every human-hating environmentalist across America, please remember this Mother’s Day that rope is cheap, handguns are widely available, and many kitchen stoves now operate on environmentally-friendly natural gas.