Why my Hummer is the problem

This Sunday's Oregonian had a blitheringly obvious article about how the REAL problem isn't "global warming" or "carbon footprint" but the fact that there's just too many goddamn people.Well, duh.

Any naturalist or biologist can tell you that an organism without size or population limits eventually kills itself; it either gets too big or too numerous for the resources that support it. Unpreyed deer graze off the browse and starve. Redwoods rot at the base and topple. Michael Jackson becomes a white woman who sleeps with little boys.

De Toqueville famously said that democracy lasts until the citizenry realizes it can vote itself largesse out of the public purse. I'd add that it then votes for those bobos that tell it that it's decisions are good and wise. Our current candidates are among the great tradition of useful idiots who tell us to play and spend while ignoring the house burning down around us. I confidently predict we will never address this issue until it's gone all Soylent Green on us.And the simple truth is that you and I, with our hair dryers and Ipods are the problem, not the teeming mass of goatherders and farmers in Bihari Province. We're driving our habitat under faster with our Hummer and our semi-detached ranch houses than they have in 10,000 years of burning donkey dung to cook over.

But do you honestly think we'd vote for someone who tromped onstage and announced "You dumb fuckers have helped destroy our own world. You shit where you eat, care only for your own comfort, you hollow out your own economy in pursuit of cheaper plastic knick-knacks at the Wal-Mart, and to do this you have enabled your own rulers to rob, lie and spin you. You have neither willpower nor critical thought and you don't care to use them if you do. Your passion for luxury and ease and your unwillingness to limit your own growth are choking you in the effluvia of your society. If you vote for me I will confront you with your own slothfulness and deceit and force you to make the hard decisions to change them, or collapse like the civilizations that preceded you"?

Me neither.