Don’t #EatTheBabies or #EatTheChilldren, Eat the Fat Acceptance Activists

People are still talking about the rather hilarious troll who crashed a town hall being given by freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In a set up so obvious only the most dim-witted couldn’t see through it, the young woman insisted that the fight against global warming was not enough. Even some Swedish scientist’s idea of eating the dead (which is apparently a story that is only true on the Internet) was insufficient. We must immediately start eating babies.

This led to the #EatTheBabies and #EatTheChildren hashtag trending on Twitter, with typically hilarious results. More than a few (myself included) reminded the Twitterverse that this was not the first time baby consumption had been encouraged. The writer Jonathan Swift, of Gulliver’s Travels fame, once suggested in his satirical essay, A Modest Proposal, that we should eat babies to end poverty. This was in response to a large number of poor single mothers in his time. Apparently, even in the 18th century, when single motherhood was very taboo, it was a major driver of poverty.

But today eating babies is offered as a method of population control. And there’s no question that the explosion in the population (primarily due to medical advancements, such as immunization, and increased food production, resulting in fewer deaths from starvation) is a major driver of carbon emissions. But eating babies is not the correct answer.

Now I wouldn’t even consider eating a baby, even if the world depended on it. I have trouble eating veal (baby cow, for the uninitiated). Unless it’s veal parmesan. Anything “parmesan” is inherently awesome. Although I still don’t think I would eat baby parmesan. But more importantly, babies probably have the absolute lowest carbon footprint of all humans. They are not the problem.

There is a better way, though. Many modern countries are struggling with obesity. I once did too. But no longer. Once I discovered an app to track my calories, nutritional intake, and exercise, I was able to discipline myself to eat less and exercise more in a way that resulted in losing over one pound per week. As a result, I lost 30 pounds in half a year. It was quite simple. Eat 500 calories less than I burn per day, and ensure that I get all the necessary vitamins and minerals. It is only possible to do this by eating more fruits and vegetables and less meat. So by losing weight, I reduced my carbon footprint.

If every fat person in the world did this, we would have a significant impact and be generally healthier and therefore less of a burden to the healthcare system. We wouldn’t need to ban farting cows and lamb and other meats. We would just need to eat fewer of them. But there is one segment of the population that this would not apply to. A peculiar splinter of the Body Positivity movement known as the Fat Acceptance movement.

Now Body Positivity was originally a good idea. It was about encouraging people, especially young women, not to harm themselves to attain an unattainable body image. It’s better to be a healthy size eight than an anorexic or bulimic size four. But then the Fat Acceptance movement got carried away.

Instead of being happy with average weight, they decided that being morbidly obese was fine. So massive they break normal scales. So huge that when they need an MRI because they have chest pains, they get sent to the zoo because they’re too big for human-sized MRI machines. So gigantic that, in the words of the eternally corpulent (and now sadly, but unsurprisingly, dead) comedian Ralphie May when he lost 270 pounds, that they could lose an entire fat man and still be fat as hell. So instead of avoiding the unhealthy lifestyles of self-starvation and forced regurgitation, they went completely the other way and chose the unhealthy lifestyle of constantly stuffing one’s face.

One does not get that large without engorging themselves on absurd amounts of meat. And it’s pretty clear that they have just given up on health, and will continue to murder the earth by scarfing down an endless diet of dead animals. So the solution is obvious. We must eat the Fat Acceptance activists.

We must find and corral all of the unrepentant gluttons of the world. This will be easy, since they can’t outrun us. The obese are nearly 40% of the U.S. population, according to the CDC, and their carbon footprint by far exceeds a normal person’s. So if we eat all of the ones who won’t go on a diet, humanity’s carbon footprint will be reduced, because normal people don’t eat nearly so many animals. They also don’t fart as much as fatties do.

Also, since the population will be noticeably reduced, the power consumption will decrease, reducing emissions even more. Not just because there will be fewer people. Skinny people won’t need the air conditioner turned on so high, because their fat free bodies don’t retain as much heat. Also, the weight carried by planes, trains, and automobiles will be noticeably lower, improving fuel efficiency.

We could even solve other problems in the process. We could ship fat people to parts of the world where there is hunger. If we send fat people to Venezuela, for example, where hunger is rampant due to the widespread mismanagement and incompetence of the Maduro government, we could reverse the weight loss trend amongst their population. This could be mutually beneficial. We could lift the sanctions and trade fat people for oil.

We could even have a form of slave reparations. We could send fat white people to the poorer parts of the black community where there is hunger. This would also be fiscally beneficial, since poor blacks would no longer need food stamps and could feast on chunky white people for years. The only trick is that there is a higher rate of obesity in the black community. So we may need to actually send some black people back to Africa to feed the hungry there.

Make no mistake, many fat people could become unfat people (as I did) by simply having a responsible diet. But for those incorrigible few, cannibalism is probably the best choice. We can reduce the carbon footprint of the human race by eating the hopelessly heavy. In a fat-free world, we would all be healthy, happy, and have a much lower carbon footprint. And since we would all be noticeably more attractive, we could get laid more frequently and have all the babies we want.

Why #ClimateChange Rhetoric From Greta Thunberg and Others Doesn’t Help

So the internet is going nuts over Greta Thunberg, a teenager from Sweden. She yelled at the UN about climate change. Her supporters are calling her speech “Stirring” and “Passionate” and “Powerful”. Detractors are complaining about a child being propped up to support a political issue. Just about everyone is being angry and annoying.

Now, granted, the propping up of children, widows, grieving mothers, and victims can go too far. They’re presented in a way that makes them unassailable, with even mild criticism resulting in a cacophony of “How-dare-you”s. And typically, proponents get a bit carried away. Thunberg has already been compared to Joan of Arc and Jesus.

But that doesn’t warrant her critics being huge douchebags. The response from the right is just a bit too vituperative. Like Dinesh D’Souza comparing her to Nazi propaganda, and managing to prove Godwin’s Law in record time. Or YouTuber Mark Dice calling her a brat and threatening to dump trash in the ocean. This would be a petulant act reminiscent of Xerxes whipping and branding the waters of the Hellespont to punish it for destroying his bridges. And, of course, @realDonaldTrump couldn’t resist trolling her on Twitter. They all need to take a breather.

The perfect microcosm of the hysteria was an interaction on Fox News between Michael Knowles of the conservative Daily Wire and Democratic activist Chris Hahn. Knowles called Thunberg a mentally ill child. Technically, an accurate statement (she has depression and Asperger’s), but intoned in a way that sounds like an ad hominem dig. Chris Hahn took umbrage, but his response focused primarily on Thunberg’s age. Thus, supporting the point of many rightwingers that children are used as props because they are perceived as untouchable.

Children can participate in activism, and frequently have to good effect. They are not immune to criticism, though, and shouldn’t be. But effective criticism should always contain a degree of tact, especially when dealing with children. So here’s how to appropriately criticize a child.

Thunberg insists that the “climate budget” will be used up in 8.5 years. That’s true if we want to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. To limit to two degrees, we have 26 years, although the consequences of that would be much worse than 1.5. So it would behoove us to move quickly. Nothing wrong with this part of it.

She says people are dying and ecologies are collapsing. Sort of true, although what the scientists tell us is that the truly dire consequences (such as losing 250K per year due to climate change) are what happens if we do nothing. They’re not really saying that it happens right now. But there are deaths happening. As a guy who ran away from Hurricane Irma, a storm that was more powerful than it would have been otherwise due to climate change and absolutely devastated the Florida Keys, I’ve seen it first hand.

But where she went wrong is when she berated attendees for offering “technical solutions” and “business as usual”. If I’m not mistaken, replacing fossil fuels with wind and solar (and possibly nuclear) is a technical solution. And why not invest in other technologies that would improve mitigation or adaptation? We’re being told that what’s happening is not enough, but what alternatives is she proposing?

This vagueness is one thing that aggravates me. We’re being told of dangers, but not being told what should be done differently. And she doesn’t get to play the “I’m only 16” card, because if she has time to be as involved as she is in this, she has time to read up on solutions too. When I was her age, I was quite capable of doing research, and Google wasn’t a thing back then. So if technical solutions are not enough, what is?

Climate change deniers (of which I am not) seize on this vagueness to claim that there is an underlying motive. As if it’s all a ploy to bring in “Green Socialism”. They support this by showing pictures of Thunberg in what looks like an Antifa shirt. And the truth is, there have been numerous pundits pushing this notion, which I find to be despicable opportunism. Using a crisis to push a political agenda is slimy. The truth is, there is little need to adopt green socialism.

The scientists show that going green would actually improve efficiency, meaning energy production would be more profitable. That means that capitalist solutions are entirely possible, although some of the more intractable energy producers might need a nudge or two to get moving. The fact that U.S. renewable energy has nearly doubled since 2008 and now produces nearly one sixth of our energy supports this. So there’s no need for alarmism on a socialist takeover. But it also means that the “technical solutions” do actually appear to be producing results, although we need to speed things up.

But Thunberg’s vagueness is not the only problem. When I saw a bunch of young people protesting and speechifying about climate change a couple of days ago, I started to freak out. One young lady insisted that some damage would be irreversible within 18 months. I live about 100 yards from Tampa Bay, which makes me one of the most vulnerable people in the country (if not the world) when it comes to things like sea level rise and increasingly powerful storms. So, naturally, I feverishly searched the internet for details about the specific damage that would be irreversible within 18 months.

And found bupkis. I did find one BBC article which quoted someone saying that the next 18 months were critical because of various climate summits and conferences and whatnot where decisions will be made. But nothing about damage within the next 18 months. Oh, and the person quoted was Prince Charles. I don’t think he’s a climate expert.

This is not the first time someone oversold the threat. Like when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the world would end in 12 years. We need to reduce emissions significantly over the next twelve years to limit the damage, but the world will still be here. Or when she said Miami would be gone in a few years. Scientists say the sea will rise two to seven feet by 2100. That means pieces (perhaps most) of Miami might be gone sometime in the next eighty years. That’s a bit more than a few years.

No one ever seems to bother specifying the threat. “Irreversible damage” is a bit vague. What does that mean? Will all the crops die? Will all the glaciers melt? If so, when and where? Let us know the details.

Here’s one thing I discovered about this word “irreversible”. It doesn’t necessarily mean “irreversible”. For example, if we dump a bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere, it can be pulled down to earth by plants and whatnot. But about twenty percent of it will hang in the air for a much longer time. So this part isn’t “irreversible” it’s “irreversible in our lifetime with existing technology”. If we were specific about this, it would tell us that one way to reverse this is to invest in research and development. We could produce technologies to speed up this reversal. But instead, we’re just inundated with scary language.

Now some things are irreversible. If a species goes extinct, it’s gone. If Greenland melts, you can’t just up and refreeze it. And if anything like this is going to happen, we need to know when and where so we can take action. But nobody in the news bothers to cover that. It’s just people yelling and waving signs and telling us the world is going to end.

I’m not a denier. If the climate goes to hell, I’ll be one of the first victims. I want people to take quick and decisive action. I want to try anything we can to fix this. But when people seem to exaggerate the danger from climate change, it just hurts that cause. Deniers will point to the exaggerated and frequently vague claims as evidence that the whole thing is a hoax. They’re already pointing to times when past predictions went awry.

If you want to motivate people, give them a concrete goal. This definitely works on Americans. Don’t make vague and contradictory claims. Tell us what technologies need to be developed. Tell us how we might change our lifestyles to avert this. Tell us how many wind turbines and solar panels and nuclear plants need to be built to replace fossil fuel power plants.

Doomsday threats, especially when they are of questionable validity or incredibly vague, don’t tell us what to do. It just results in fear and anxiety, and then backlash if the claims are shown to be spurious or exaggerated. This perpetuates the climate deadlock, which we can’t afford. Deniers aren’t helping, but neither are overzealous activists. Instead of exaggerating the risks, let us know the details of the danger, and how we can fix this.

I’d recommend ignoring all of these people. Ignore the screaming activists, ignore the trolls (even if they are president of something), and ignore the pundits throwing rhetorical feces at each other. Instead, look to responsible, science based sources, like NASA or NOAA or the United States military. All of them agree that climate change is a big problem, and are proposing and researching numerous potential solutions. Reports from them, not from climate activists and their detractors, provide a fair and accurate picture, and have the wisdom to include potential solutions to the problem.

#Climatechange thoughtlessness

Wednesday night’s climate change marathon of townhalls on CNN, like most CNN townhalls over the past few years, was mostly an endless series of the same old talking points. Primarily applause lines which appeal to people who already plan to vote D straight down the ticket. And it highlighted the flaws in the climate change debate.

On the one hand, we are consistently told that climate change is a crisis that we must do something about. Which I agree with. But then candidates push for some solutions, while ignoring or dismissing others. One would think that if we’re in such dire circumstances, all options would be on the table. But they’re not. Here are three things that most of the candidates blew it on: Nuclear, agriculture, and steel.

I’ve never understood why so many people dismiss nuclear as an option. Sure, the Soviets ate it with their janky technology at Chernobyl. Sure the Japanese built a reactor where it could get slapped by tsunamis. Sure there was a leak at Three Mile Island that hurt no one. But on the other hand, the French are one of the cleanest countries in the world, and they’ve had very little difficulty. There must be a way to do it right.

Fact is, wind and solar are intermittent. The sun spends part of the day on the other side of the planet, and power storage is a problem that hasn’t been figured out. The wind doesn’t blow all the time. Not even in Tornado Alley. Not even in Florida in hurricane season. Nuclear seems like an option that doesn’t have these limitations.

Only Andrew Yang pointed out that nuclear could work. We could make reactors with Thorium that don’t melt down. We could store nuclear waste without risking the population. We know this, because we already do. We could possibly even recycle nuclear fuel. The French do. But green activists seem inclined to dismiss this automatically. Pointing out potential dangers and problems to be overcome is rational. Dismissing out of hand is ridiculous.

Several candidates pointed out that we need to eat less meat to save the planet. No. We need to find ways to manage the emissions from agriculture, which comprise nine percent of global emissions. These emissions are caused by things like how we manage soil and manure. Adopting better ways to manage these might mean we could continue to eat meat. And not all meat is equal. Beef and mutton produce high emissions. Chicken, pork, and fish…not so much.

But for some reason, the first move is finding ways to tell people what to do with their lives, instead of finding ways to reduce the emissions at their source. Instead of helping farmers manage the problem, we tell people not to eat hamburgers.

One spot that virtually every candidate misses is the fact that steel production produces ten percent of global emissions. And steel is made with coal. And even though there are a few alternative methods that are under development, that’s not changing any time soon.

Steel is one of the most recycled items in the world, but that still produces emissions and still doesn’t meet demand. And demand will only increase as the developing world develops. But this goes unmentioned by virtually everyone. Green energy won’t change this. Eating vegetables won’t change this.

Honestly, even though this is a seriously unpopular option, I don’t see any way to fix this apart from some kind of “clean coal” (I know, a contradiction in terms) option. Even if we eliminate coal power plants, we’ll still have coal emissions from steel. If we can’t sequester those or find another option, we can’t achieve net zero emissions.

Let’s be clear. I am not a shill for nuclear. If there was an economically feasible way to do everything with green energy, that would be find with me. If we could make steel using electrolysis or hydrolysis or whatever the scientists are working on, that’s great. And if it was necessary to stop eating meat, I would do that. But it aggravates me that people aren’t willing to consider alternatives.

I believe climate change is a threat. I live one hundred yards from Tampa Bay. That means I’m in one of the most endangered places in the country, and possibly the world. But if the situation is truly as dire as we’re being told, why aren’t all options on the table? Why do we have to limit ourselves to a narrow set of solutions that have been deemed acceptable by environmental activists, when we know that other solutions are viable and often employed in other parts of the world?

If I was a suspicious type, I would assume that there was some hidden agenda on the part of climate activists. It doesn’t make sense that they’ve married themselves to a limited set of solutions. But I’m not. I think people fear nuclear because they don’t understand it. I think people want to ban meat because they don’t realize there are other options. And I think almost nobody understands the part of the problem steel poses, because nobody ever seems to talk about it.

So we need to get past this. If climate change is truly the threat that we are being told it is, then any viable solution must be considered. All options on the table. Whatever works, regardless of how popular it may be.