Women Are Responsible for Global Warming (NOT!)

So I was thinking.

What is it about sustainability that keeps eluding us (this is the royal “us,” which means “me,” which can be read as a “royal ass”).

So here are the assumptions:

Global warming is man made.
It is a slow, radical change in the living environment called “earth,” that eventually makes it uninhabitable.
It looks like it is inevitable (at least at the moment).

Assuming these assumptions is not a fallacy, it leads me to the next question:

The human species evolved on earth the same way all other creatures did. We know that some species went extinct in the past. Most, if not all, of them failed to survive when their environment changed in a way they could not (or would not, or did not have the time to) adapt to.

But humanity is different. Adaptation is our number one survival trait. We do it fast. We do it well. We can actually do it without doing it at all — simply by imagining an alternative environment that can sustain us, and then making it happen! It is magic! We are a VERY GOOD species, God bless our heart.

Having all that said, it does look a bit suspicious that a species with so many advantages has clearly set its mind on destroying itself. Where is the logic? The common sense? The natural order? Anyone? Anyone? No? Sold!

Now let’s put a pin in evolution and circle back around to sustainability. Just to annoy you.

What are the specifics of the tenacious process man conducts to get his environment obliterated?

The simple answer is resource consumption. There are a LOT of people on earth. One might say: too many. And earth has a limited amount of itself. Earth is a finite resource. Like a bag of chips. You can keep nibbling at it up to a certain point. And then you have to get up and pick a fresh one out of the cabinet. Only there are no more bags of chips. And you are too fat to move.

The more interesting question is: how did we get here? Other than the simple fact that we are very, very stupid. But stupid is not a trait. It’s a symptom. And evolution does not look kindly on stupid. If stupid were the reason, we would have been extinct by now.

So what happened? We are a species whose number one achievement is destroying its habitat, and itself by extension. And again, this is not a trait. This is an outcome.

What is the trait? I will tell you, so you can stop trying to chew your eyes out, and save yourself from reading the rest of this pitiful rant.

GREED.

It is not a sin. It is in our DNA. It is the same as the giraffe’s long neck or the skunk’s stink bladder. It comes from the path our species picked for survival.

And I have a theory.

* * *

This is the point where I must warn you that you should stop reading if you are under thirteen years old (for female) or under thirty (for male). Because I am going to talk about SEX.

Yes, boys and girls. Sex is VERY bad! It is very good! It is terrible and fun! Whatever you do, try to avoid it at all cost! Because sex is a way to make more people. And this is something we should definitely avoid!

One of the many characteristics of survival is continuity. In order to do that you can: A) live forever, or B) create more of you. Most creatures on earth pick option B. Not sure why. I guess option A is just too lonely. Everybody wants a friend.

As it happens, a lot of species select sex as the method for reproduction. It has to do with mixing things up. Shuffle the traits. It is the hallmark of evolution. Keep making a lot of new versions of you by combining old versions, and let the better mongrel win. A.K.A.: survival of the fittest.

The problem with reproduction is that the new individuals start out very small. Weak. Impotent. Daft. And other creatures, that like to eat soft things or just hate children in general, make it very hard on the younglings to reach adulthood. And by that, hinder the species’ chance to survive. Evolution doesn’t like that.

In the African savanna, the young warthogs sleep in shallow pits. And just before dawn, the Tiger^* comes and reaches into the pits and just plucks out breakfast. So the warthogs must wake up early, and stand around sleep-stunned, keeping themselves uneaten. Because no one wants to eat bacon with bad breath.

The warthogs that do not survive are the ones that sleep in. And this is what created the famous idiom: “He who does not wake early is eaten by a tiger.” Yes. The same line your parents told you to make you get up for school. Along with the next phrase they always used to make you eat breakfast: “If you do not eat, a policeman will come.” These threats are all based on true stories. And the proof is the existence of the “Tiger Police” you all know and love.

All this comes to teach us something about evolution. Because if evolution were as perfect as creationists like to think, warthogs would have developed alarm clocks by now. But evolution is not smart, or sophisticated, and does not have a thinking process. It is an observed process. And a working one.

So what does evolution do to ensure continuity? Whatever it can. Basically it just flails its axe, screams “AAAHHHH,” and charges onward. Hoping it will impress someone.

The ways to ensure young individuals will grow up to be sexually obsessed teenagers vary. One way is to create a LOT of them. Using statistics to ensure continuity. The problem with this method is that it requires a LOT of energy. Simple creatures can use very little energy to get from spore to parent. Amoeba, bacteria, and fish can do that. But complicated creatures — namely mammals that carry tons of traits in their genetic bag — need much more energy to grow up. And cannot use statistics. They have to do something else.

* * *

The second trick to keep your species going is a concept that may sound appealing to most creatures: “Don’t get eaten!”

To achieve that you can use some specific traits, like running fast, hiding well, being poisonous, or just taste really awful. Only most of these do not work very well at the evolutionary level, especially when you are young, sweet, and slow.

When evolution looks at “not being eaten,” what it actually sees is THE FOOD CHAIN.

The food chain is a bunch of round bagels strung together vertically. Each pastry holds another species in its hole. The species on top eats the ones at the bottom. The higher up you are in the food chain, the better your chances, as an individual, of getting to use your pension plan.

And this is where evolution, energy, resource consumption, and continuity all come together.

The grass eats sunshine and water. The warthog eats grass. The lion eats warthogs. The human eats lions (if they are really hungry) or better yet: wears them. Nobody wears a human. No other species does, that is. Because humans are at the top of the food chain.

And thus evolution gets humans to survive better than anyone else. But humans need a lot of energy to do that. Why? The food chain! The grass needs the sunshine and minerals. The warthog needs the grass, sunshine, and minerals. Humans need cow, fodder, water, old dead microorganisms, land, and wood (for the toothpick). The species higher in the food chain actually feed on ALL the things below them. They need the accumulated energy of all the lower beings to thrive.

OK. Wait. But how does sex come into play here? To see it, let’s look at the specifics of reproduction through the evolutionary lens.

All creatures that use sex create underdeveloped versions of themselves. And the more intricate beings, which depend on a lot of energy, create relatively fewer offspring. So now they have to protect them, physically, for a long time, in order to ensure survival. This requires even more energy. And when would they go about acquiring all this energy, when they have to keep an eye on the little brats all the time?!

So here is where evolution steps in and devises an evil plan. It divides the species into two distinct sub-creatures. The fully functional one that can nurture the offspring from day minus one and go out and hunt for energy when needed — let’s call it “female.” And the appendix — the one that basically can’t do much, other than pass on genes and hang around, because it is the reduced form of the potent creature. We’ll simply call it “male.”

So here we are. Half the species grows the young ones, and half have the free time to help with energy acquisition when they are not fighting each other over who has the biggest genes.

OK, said the species, we can work with that. And they used this trick to climb up the food chain. Apparently, if half the race is free to work out and beat other animals out of its territory, it becomes pretty successful — at least at the survival task. Hence, it can mix its genes further and climb the evolutionary scale better. And this is where humans thrive. Because humans have a unique trait they worked very hard to develop: imagination.

They imagine things. And keep exploring to see what kind of ideas they can put into practice.

The female part looks at preserving energy and saving lives. Because they know how hard it is to create a new person, and they have less time for non-parental activities. So you got the single-hand syringe. The life raft. The dishwasher. Disposable diapers. The fire escape. Computer algorithms. Tipp-Ex. And, of course, WiFi.

The male part strives to extract energy faster and use it more efficiently. So you got the water pump, and the steam engine, and all sorts of transportation devices to allow him to get away from domestic work faster, and lamps to see naked bottoms better, and of course weapons of all sorts. To climb the food chain.

* * *

And this is where the crux of the matter lies. Humans became obsessed with acquiring energy easily and quickly. Half the species is running around acquiring energy for the other half. And the other half, which CAN fend for itself in that respect, lets the first half have their fun. Because they like this half very much. Because it gives them very good orgasms (Note: this bawdy remark is a symptom of me being male. I have no clue why women find men attractive).

When all you do is chase energy, and keep getting good at that, you are bound to get confused at some point, and think of energy not as a means to survival but as the goal of your existence.

So the human race got to the top of the food chain, and feeds on EVERYTHING, and still wants more! Because it got into its head that the only important thing is to get more. Evolution pushed humans upward, and this momentum became part of the species’ genome. Greed. The greed gene. A dominant gene that rarely skips a generation.

* * *

So there you have it.

Humanity does not try to destroy its environment on purpose. Humanity has a genetic defect. Greed is the bad evolutionary trait that will destroy the species. And there is nothing they can do about it. Humans cannot lose greed any more than they can lose their opposable thumbs.

Well, maybe… maybe evolution will step in again and take this characteristic away too. Like it took our tails away. Only then… we will not be human anymore.

* * *

I told all this to my baby girl. My little, sweet, twenty-three-year-old daughter. And when I finished, she said:

“So basically you’re saying women are responsible for global warming.”

Maybe…