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Corey Deitz
39
I’m pragmatic when it comes to what lives and dies. I think
Darwin’s idea of natural selection (survival of the fittest) probably has
vanquished more species from the Earth than we’ll ever even know. Yet,
with all of them long gone and their paw prints fading into the horizon, the
Earth still twirls on. Scrooge said it best in A Christmas Carol by Charles
Dickens: “If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the
surplus population.”
Take those freaking pandas, for instance. They have a sex drive
that is lower than the stock market during a lame-duck Bush
administration. At last count, there were between 1000 and 2000 in China
amid the ones living in the forest and the ones which are kept in captivity.
Why are they close to extinction? Because the Chinese ravaged the
bamboo forests. Does anyone remember seeing bumper stickers that said,
“Save the Bamboo Forests”? Nope. We were too busy saving the forests
in the Pacific Northwest and making 30,000 logging jobs extinct.
This would be a good moment to tell you how much I hate people
who affix bumper stickers on their cars to promote causes. What a bunch
of lazy, lard-ass activists. That’s the best you can do? Slap a bumper
sticker on your car?! Why aren’t you out there at least pretending to
sacrifice for your cause? It doesn’t have to be much. Just make some
effort to prove to me that whatever you believe in goes slightly beyond
being able to plunk down $3.00 for a pre-written slogan that attaches to
your car’s ass.
This is especially irksome: the act of actually putting an
environmentally conscious bumper sticker on any vehicle. Is that the
epitome of irony? After all, for the bumper sticker to be effective – for it
to reach the eyes of the people you want to communicate your message to
– you would have to drive your carbon monoxide-spewing earth-
unfriendly host-car on real streets. And, as we all know: cars are killing
the planet. So, it just comes down to what dies first: some whale or that
patch of dirt to your right.
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