Key Terms for Understanding the Environmental Crisis

By members of the Cal Poly Stubborn Denial Society

I hate it when my professors use so-called “scientific fact” to tell me about global warming and other theoretical stuff. I mean, my parents told me there’s no such thing as global warming, and I’ve known them far longer than any of these shifty “professionals.” After losing multiple debates to green thumbs, professors, graduate students, and that chick that makes my hot chocolate at Julian’s, I’ve decided to come up with a dictionary that will help you, my dear reader, dodge the potholes of the conservative side of the green debate. These terms are often thrown around by green thumbs, and from what my (unfortunately) requisite high-school biology class has taught me, this what I discern they must mean:

Global Warming: One time, on TV, I saw this image of a polar bear swimming out in the open ocean trying to find food for its cub. But with the earlier melting of the polar ice caps, the bears are starving because they don’t have the ice to help them hunt seals. I thought it would be so cool to swim with that polar bear.

Hybrid Cars: A hybrid car is what you get when you mix a 4-door sedan with a minivan. I call it a station wagon. These crazy intellectuals always try to sound important by giving awesome things like station wagons lame names like hybrids.

Greenhouse Gases: First, I’m pretty sure gases aren’t real, because I can’t see them. Anyways, I suppose they sound pretty bad. I once saw this movie and these guys were being poisoned by noxious gas. I bet that was probably greenhouse gas. I’ll bet the terrorists are doing everything they can to release greenhouse gases into Times Square. I hate those terrorists. I’m sure glad we won in Iraq, or as I like to call it, America Mark II.

Greenpeace: Wasn’t that the name those kids from Captain Planet gave to their organization? I’m also pretty sure that that South American kid who wielded the “heart” element is an illegal immigrant. In that case, scientists should be probing into the relation of “heart” and global temperatures. I’m sure they’ll find a spicy correlation.

Organic Produce: Why would anyone not want to eat virulent chemicals along with their fruit? Each day I take pride in consuming my laboratory pesticides. If we didn’t eat pesticides, flies would form colonies right on our faces! You know those videos of the African children with flies buzzing around their eyes? Maybe if they lathered their food rations in carcinogenic (cancer-preventing) chemicals, they wouldn’t be so appealing to those malaria mosquitoes! I say let those vegetarians eat their naked fruits and veggies. They’ll die off while the rest of us inherit the world!

Sustainable Practices: Sustainability is how one action makes it easier for another similar action to occur. Like if I slash and burn one acre of forest, it then opens up several more acres for me to slash and burn. Since we can burn forest faster, we can use our extra time to come up with more explosive means of scarring the surface of the Earth. I call them Progress Scars.

Alternative Energy: I’m totally for alternative energy. I saw this movie once where solar panels on this satellite were used to collect energy to charge a massive space to surface laser beam. We could use this laser beam to create more Progress Scars. I’ll bet you five barrels of sweet, delicious oil that if we made a Progress Scar in the shape of the Christian cross on the surface of America Mark II we’d be able to convert to those Islamic heathens. Screw alternative energy, more like alternative evangelization.

Biodiversity: I watched “Planet Earth” on the Discovery Channel earlier this year. I had to mute it, though, not because I have anything against Sigourney Weaver’s narration, I’m just opposed to women talking about things I don’t understand. Biodiversity means that there are too many species in the world. It seemed like all those different animals on “Planet Earth” were bent on killing each other. Maybe if we thinned out their ranks a little, animals would be able to revert back to their Garden of Eden forms, where they wore topcoats and drank tea out of delicate china. Just like in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm.” I didn’t understand that book.

Well, my conservative friend, I sure hope my explanations on these terms will help you in your next bitter dispute with those worthless hemp-growers.

The Cal Poly Stubborn Denial Society meets Wednesdays in a magical fairy realm far away from the real world.