If you picked up the New York Times Magazine last Sunday, maybe you read about how commodity prices have achieved a “paradigm shift” which obviously means that in a hundred years or so, the Earth will be burnt to a crisp and also flooded and a new species of bear-dinosaurs will roam over our mountains of discarded plastic/carcasses. I read this and wondered what I always wonder when I read about the rainforest, the orangutans, fracking, Ferngully, Hexus, Jane Goodall, the ice caps etc. etc.: where is my hovercraft?
If we’re so determined to blow this shit to smithereens (and by “this shit” I mean “Earth”), why are we doing it with jumbo jets and Escalades? This is BORING. The fact that we are destroying the planet with our tired old trains, planes and automobiles is the punch in the gut of all climate change facts. If we are going to melt Antarctica, I would like to do it while floating, serenely, just a few feet above the acrid, lifeless earth. I want that cloud of exhaust that warms my ankles as I jaywalk through Manhattan traffic to be belching from fossil-fuel-guzzling hovercraft; I want that caustic plume of pollution above the BQE to be spewed from a silent stream of floating cars; I want that thick Gowanus-air to be imbued with the effusive emissions of some seriously inefficient little spaceships. If we’re past the point of no return, then let’s go down in style.
This post may contain affiliate links.
