[lit-ideas] FW: Kurt Vonnegut on "Global Warming"
- From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 19:06:19 -0400
.. human have done, that the humans race has ...
So I sound like a Chinaman. Unintended poetic license. The Chinese are worse
polluters than we are. And they haven't even concluded yet that a regular car
isn't good enough to ferry 2 or 3 kids around. Only an SUV will do ...
----- Original Message -----
From: Andy Amago
To: lit-ideas
Sent: 10/10/2005 6:55:24 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Kurt Vonnegut on "Global Warming"
I heard him interviewed by David Branccacio on Now. KV thinks humans have
polluted the world beyond repair. He thinks the planet is dying and it's too
late to reverse it. He thinks the human race has no ability for foresight to
look at the consequences of their actions. That applies to Iraq, certainly,
but he is talking about what humans did to the earth. KV also thinks, looking
at Auschwitz and all the other wars and horrors human have done, that the
humans race has nothing to redeem it. The earth will be glad to get it off its
back. [My comments: Scientists say that Katrina did so much damage because the
barrier islands and marshes, once the Gulf coast's defense against hurricanes,
are now gone. We used to think the world would end in a bang. Looks like it
will end in a polluted haze, and who can argue; millions of tons of pollution
are spewed into the air and water every hour. At some point things lose the
ability to repair themselves. It's interesting that Al G
ore wrote a book saying that the internal combustion engine was the most
dangerous threat to the earth. Gore was booed off the stage for it. Human
foresight in action.]
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/the_end_is_near/
The End is Near
By Kurt Vonnegut
I am writing this before the election, so I cannot know whether George W. Bush
or John F. Kerry will be our President, God willing, for the next four years.
These two Nordic, aristocratic multi-millionaires are virtually twins, and as
unlike most of the rest of us as a couple of cross-eyed albinos. But this much
I find timely: Both candidates were and still are members of the exclusive
secret society at Yale, called ?Skull and Bones.? That means that, no matter
which one wins, we will have a Skull and Bones President at a time when entire
vertebrate species, because of how we have poisoned the topsoil, the waters and
the atmosphere, are becoming, hey presto, nothing but skulls and bones.
Poetry!
What was the beginning of this end? Some might say Adam and Eve and the apple
of knowledge. I say it was Prometheus, a Titan, a son of gods, who in Greek
myth stole fire from his parents and gave it to human beings. The gods were so
mad they chained him naked to a rock with his back exposed, and had eagles eat
his liver.
And it is now plain that the gods were right to do that. Our close cousins the
gorillas and orangutans and chimps and gibbons have gotten along just fine all
this time while eating raw vegetable matter, whereas we not only prepare hot
meals, but have now all but destroyed this once salubrious planet as a
life-support system in fewer than 200 years, mainly by making thermodynamic
whoopee with fossil fuels.
The Englishman Michael Faraday built the first dynamo, capable of turning
mechanical energy into electricity, only 173 years ago. The first oil well in
the United States, now a dry hole, was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, by
Edwin L. Drake only 145 years ago. The German Karl Benz built the first
automobile powered by an internal combustion engine only 119 years ago.
The American Wright brothers, of course, built and flew the first airplane only
101 years ago. It was powered by gasoline. You want to talk about irresistible
whoopee?
A booby trap.
Fossil fuels, so easily set alight! Yes, and as Bush and Kerry are out
campaigning, we are presently touching off nearly the very last whiffs and
drops and chunks of them. All lights are about to go out. No more electricity.
All forms of transportation are about to stop, and the planet Earth will soon
have a crust of skulls and bones and dead machinery.
And nobody can do a thing about it. It?s too late in the game. Don?t spoil the
party, but here?s the truth: We have squandered our planet?s resources,
including air and water, as though there were no tomorrow, so now there isn?t
going to be one.
So there goes the Junior Prom, but that?s not the half of it.
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