I know a lot of conservatives. Hell, I voted for Bush in the last two elections--the first time because I was all gung-ho wearing my newbie conservative powdered wig and the second because I thought he was the lesser of two evils.

And most of the conservatives I know pride themselves on perpetually repeating the mantra that the scientific theory global warming and the harm that we are doing to the ozone is all a sham. So, willingly ignoring the fifteen years of scientific study I had undergone to the year 2000, I went along with them and effectively said, "Yeah, that science stuff is bullshit. There shouldn't be government regulation to protect the environment." After all, I thought, human beings have been here for millions of years and human civilization has been around for tens of thousands of those years and we haven't significantly affected the biosphere in that time. Why should this time be any different?

Yeah, I know, the Overlord--yours truly--stopped thinking. Who knows, maybe I was still trying to read Old Man Bush's lips when he stuttered the second syllable of "tax-es."

So let's go over this whole sy-ince thing again as it relates to the ozone because reading about it in Carl Sagan's last book has got me thinking again and that means danger to this administration who continues to rely on its voters and supporters to continue not thinking.

So here goes: All of the air on Earth is made up of about 20% Oxygen which is actually a diatomic molecule of two (2) oxygen atoms because Oxygen doesn't like to be alone. So, when energy strikes Oxygen, it breaks up the atoms which then go off to join with other atoms that readily accept chemical bonds.

Well, back in the 1920s, refrigerators came out and they originally contained poisonous ammonia or sulfur dioxide which circulated through them to keep the food cold and tended to kill people when the refrigerators leaked. So, enter the corporate chemists who create chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) which are made up of one carbon atom, and/or chlorine or fluorine atoms (the most famous of which was Freon produced by DuPont). Well, according to Sagan, by the 1970s a million tons of these CFCs were produced each year and they were in everything from deodorant spray to your mother's dildo.

The problem with these little chemical gems is that they don't fall apart and they don't combine chemically with any other molecules they come in contact with. They're pretty much inert, like your Uncle Larry after a Thanksgiving meal. And eventually, all these millions of tons of CFCs made their way into the upper atmosphere of our planet.

Way up there in the highest level of the atmosphere, it takes about 100 years for UV light to chemically force these stingy CFC bastards to give up their chlorine molecules and dissolve back into carbon. Now, the problem here is that chlorine destroys ozone and is not destroyed itself--it's like an ozone cancer cell. Eventually after destroying ozone for a couple years, the chlorine sinks into the lower atmosphere where it gets carried back to earth in rain water. It is estimated that one chlorine atom may destroy 100,000 ozone molecules--talk about your chemical holocausts!

The ozone layer is our only protection against the raw Ultraviolet light of the Sun and it's not very thick. Consider this:

If all the ozone in the upper air were brought down to the temperature and pressure around you at this moment, the layer would be only three millimeters thick--about the height of the cuticle of your little finger if you're not fastidiously manicured. It's not very much ozone. But that ozone is all that stands between us and the fierce and searing long-wave UV from the Sun.
--Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan (p.87)--

White people are getting skin cancer by the cargo trailer load while people of darker colored skin are sitting in the back of the buses some would like to see them still sitting in and laughing their asses off at the irony of the whole fugged up situation.

But the bitch of it all is the whole food chain thing. See, the bottom of the food chain is the thick green shit that floats in the ocean which is actually one-celled plants called phytoplankton which is disappearing quicker than the name Osama from the President's lips after the Iraq invasion began.

These little one-celled green goos are food for little shrimp thingys which are food for small fish which are food for bigger fish which are food for...well, you get it. Any break in the food chain means that it becomes a food rope which is only useful for hanging ourselves once massive famine sets in.

Now, CFCs have been pretty much banned worldwide but there are a whole shitload of them still floating around up there and not even Dick Cheney with a shotgun to your face can make them go away with his wishes, platitudes or appeals to figmentary imaginational higher powers who supposedly support uncontested unilateral action to secure global fossil fuel resources before the end game truly begins and we can all finally take the other hand off the Bible and put them both on the gun.

Now the next new thing is Hydrocarbonflourocarbons (HCFCs) which are similar in chemical structure to CFCs except they have hydrogen atoms replacing most of the chlorine atoms. They still damage the ozone, just not with the same effect and at the same rate. In other words, they are a first step--a stop gap measure before a real solution presents itself.

Look, you can't call yourself a conservative unless you're saving something. Teddy Roosevelt was a conservative--he and John Muir helped saved millions of acres of national land from the greedy corporate bastards who would have had you living like serfs on rented land if they had their way a hundred plus years ago.

Abraham Lincoln was a conservative because he was saving the Union (or thought he was--we can debate that at a later time).

I guess even Ronald Reagan was somewhat of a conservative because he was saving representative democratic capitalism from Communism (again, we can debate this at a later time as well).

But what are these conservatives saving? Every year, I see our government grow bigger and fatter while the citizens of this country get a little more color sucked out of their lives into the ridiculous color chart which is supposed to tell us how safe to feel.

We see corporate cocksuckers like Ken Lay get off easy, probably faking his own death and who is probably now relaxing on a non-extraditionary beach somewhere, catching skin cancer on his pasty ass with a Mai-Tai in his hand and a blowjob from a brown skinned girl who we can only hope bites his shriveled up gherkin clean off and spits it into the sea for the starving small fish to eat because there isn't any phytoplankton left.

This world is ours, all of ours--it doesn't belong to Haliburton, at least not yet. And it sure as shit isn't the singular domain of the United States government. In fact, God help us if it was this government's responsibility because they'd fuck it up just like everything else they do (here's a hint--it rhymes with Kaprina and it's coming up on its one-year anniversary).

It's time for ordinary citizens to begin arming themselves with the facts and then start electing their representatives on the basis of these facts. And I'm not talking about forming civic lobbyist groups because we all know those pricks are a bunch thieving, lying, cocksuckers who may start out noble but always end up sucking satan's pecker up on Pennsylvania Avenue.

I'm talking about the lonesome citizen armed with their voice, their pens, their keyboards and their facts calling out bullshit on a bureaucracy hell bent on making sure that no human beings see the year 2200.

It's time for real change and it begins inside the head of every man, woman and child on this planet. I'm talking about a change of paradigm here. Paradigm shift is the only change worth investing energy into because every other type of change is about as useful as trying to convince a Conservative Christian to forgive a homosexual for the sin of being alive and pursuing happiness in a way which doesn't infringe upon the life or property of any other citizen. In other words, about as useful as a boner on the Pope.

TAGS:
ozone layer, science, Carl Sagan, Conservativism,