It’s hard to fight global warming wearing mittens

By Sean Pearson
While the mercury has been holding steady at a relatively mild level the past week or so, I’m not foolish enough to think that it’s all that climate change and global warming stuff I’ve been hoping for. I figure, in another 70 years or so, Homer will become a tropical, sun-kissed beach to rival the Bahamas and the Virgin Islands.
That’s when I’ll be moving north.
It’s true that I can’t help but feel somewhat responsible for the stratospheric and tropospheric ozone depletion events that are allegedly occurring around the world. However, in my defense, no one actually told us that all those aerosol cans we were spraying around some 30 years ago would cause all these problems.
O.K., so maybe they did tell us. But they used big words like “fluorocarbon” and … um … “UV.” And they didn’t put it on any cute, colorful and flashy cartoons – or even on the back of a cereal box. How’s a guy really supposed to find out about things like this?
Everything was such a blur then, with all those toxic aerosol hairspray and deodorant fumes swirling around. Back then, we weren‘t concerned about companies testing their Tocopheryl Acetate-infused shampoos on baby fur seals, or that dolphins were being harmed in the “making” of canned tuna, not because we didn’t care: We were just clueless.
And while ignorance seemed pretty bliss back then, it’s not so blissful now. Then again, I’m not sure I really like the idea of “being in the know” either. Sometimes hanging out in the dark and letting the world’s drama pass you by is much more appealing.
Still, I’m feeling kind of cheated in my lack of cool “generational” memories. While older friends are quick to share their stories of where they were when they heard that President Kennedy was shot, or how much fun they had at Woodstock, I’m stuck asking people, “Hey, where were you when the U.S. tried to switch us over to the metric system?”
The metric system.
Whose idea was this, anyway? The Canadians? Did anyone seriously think Americans would be mature enough to handle a change like that? We don’t care if it’s based on a logical standard set of prefixes in powers of 10. We don’t care that it’s been around since 1791. We don’t even care if we are the only nation in the world – with the exception of Burma and Liberia – to not adopt the metric system as our official system of measurement.
We just don’t like it.
(Hey, don’t push us. Remember what happened with “New Coke?”)
How sad is it that the U.S. Metric Association Inc. – a national nonprofit organization founded in 1916 – is still advocating for U.S. conversion to the modern metric system. The even have a Web site, (www.metric.org), to prove just how serious they are about saving us all from our doomed destiny of inches, pints and ounces. But I figure, if you haven’t had any widespread conversions in … say … the past 94 years, a fancy Web site sure isn’t going to do you that much good.
Let’s face it, this was one of the stupidest ideas yet; But only because we’re all too stubborn and bullheaded to accept anything new. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m at the front of the line when it comes to rejecting anything new, confusing or remotely threatening.) And is “stupidest” really even a word? Yes, I know we’ve already been through this whole “who sets the stupid standard” thing before, but I think it bears repeating. (For those of us who are stupid.)
Hear me out:
If you’re having a beauty contest and all of the judges are remarkably ugly, just how much are you going to trust the results of the “Miss Geoduck 2010 Beauty Pageant?”
Along those same lines, when someone calls you stupid, how can you be sure they really know what they are talking about? What if they are, in fact, stupid? Should you just take their word for it? I mean, at least if you are ugly, you can look in a mirror and know, right?
Maybe not.
We all know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but what if your “beholder” is blind, or otherwise visually impaired? Obviously, truth is what you make it.
Or how you spin it.
My grandfather used to say, “Beauty is only skin-deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”
I think this is true of the metric system as well. I’m not really sure what the connection is, but give me enough time, and I guarantee I can make one. Besides, right now I’m focusing on this whole global warming/polar bears thing.
Who knew bears could go through ice so quickly?

Subscribe via RSS

Subscribe via email