global poisoning

In the year 20-something-something, it is more polluted than all the years before it. Combined? No, but exponentially the pollution has gotten worse and worse. And in the following year, if people are still here to create it, there will be even more pollution.

The lives that people are living are more important than being alive. The gas guzzling cars and the endless intake of meat and the need to stifle every resource and replace it with some kind of cement economy has become the collective and solely acceptable way of life. Even Al Gore has stopped running for president, and even the EU citizens have stopped driving Smartcars because what’s the use, everyone knows they are so ugly and there’s no point in efficiency because of how the entire else world is contributing.

The governments realized the dangers last. Also they realized that they had caused the problems in the first place with lack of policy and lack of paying attention, but by then it was too late to rewind, but not too soon change! The governments started warning people about the dangers of pollution, over-harvesting, outlasting our resources. No one listened because they had white buds in their ears. So they started putting public announcements on the pre-digested television shows but people would fast-forward through the carefully worded messages.

So the governments started putting up fliers on the front doors of every house in every city in every country in every language. “Please recycle cardboard, glass, and plastics!” one would say and another, “Turn off your light bulbs when you leave the house, Please!” But no one moved and the clouds got blacker so the governments started saying made the signs louder until “Stop spraying chemicals on your small farm patch, people eat the fish and they all have cancer!” And finally a flier on fire engine red paper, “Carbon monoxide is a silent, undetectable, instant killer. Carbon monoxide is coming out of your exhaust pipe! There’s nothing you can do pretty much!” And people tore it off the door and looked down at it, and looked up at the four SUV’s idling in the driveway, and then looked up the road to the continually flowing exhaust from all the cars in the neighborhood and all the cars they had ever seen. They collectively held their breath as long as they could and exhaled and exhaled every good intention to be a model citizen. And the entire planet lived like they were dying and subconsciously waited for the world to end and they waited by speeding it up by driving bigger cars more and simultaneously running the furnace and the air conditioning and letting the lawn mower and the beached boat in the driveway run. And the world impatiently waited for the collective poisoning of the entire population by carbon monoxide.