by Paul Giles
November 23, 2006

The environment. What is it, why is it important to us? Do I need to get more of it than my neighbors, like a bigger car or a 50" flat-screen plasma TV, so I won't be the one on the block everyone pities? And what's with Al Gore and his movie? I mean, Schwarzenegger and Reagan went from movies to politics. Who goes from being Vice President to the Hollywood version of your 6th grade teacher showing a filmstrip?

Let me clear all this up. The environment is that stuff you live in. If you're a tuna, it's the ocean. If you're a bird, it's the sky. If you're a kangaroo, it's the Outback. (Not the steak restaurant, though I've seen a lot of people there who resemble marsupials, stuffing rolls, bottles of steak sauce and leftovers into oversized pouches.) But if you're a homo sapien, the environment is any place on Earth that's habitable, which is everywhere except Oakland and parts of Detroit.

The importance of the environment to humans cannot be underestimated, and believe me the Republican Party has tried. The reason they have so many planks in their platform is so they can cut down more trees. We need the environment so that tuna and birds can swim and fly, eat, reproduce and grow large so we can eat them and piss off annoying groups like PETA.

Harming the environment only harms ourselves. Take mercury, which is pumped into the atmosphere by coal-fired generating plants. It gets leeched into the rivers, washed into the oceans, ingested by small fish, which are eaten by bigger fish and then is concentrated in the larger predators, like tuna. We eat the mercury-laden tuna, which is harmful to our central nervous systems. That's why there's a smiling tuna on the labels of the cans we buy. It knows it may have died to feed us, but will get its revenge by slowly killing us with every bite. And damn it, I think they ingest all that mercury on purpose! They're tasty, but incredibly devious.

The worst way we harm the environment is through global warming. When I first heard about global warming I was for it. I was living in Buffalo at the time was reading about it in a magazine. I must have read it 10 times. (I was stuck in the house from all the snow and couldn't get out to buy Sports Illustrated.) Then I discovered global warming doesn't just mean getting a Saskatchewan Tan in January. The extra heat trapped in the atmosphere would melt the polar ice caps and glaciers, raising sea level so much that most coastal cities and some of the low-lying land areas would be flooded. This would result in a mass exodus of humanity away from the coasts as the oceans swallowed up our environment. When the tuna heard about this they were overjoyed. I believe they're contributing to global warming in some way we don't understand. I told you they were devious.

The main cause of global warming is the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gasses include carbon dioxide and methane. Methane comes from many sources, but mostly from cow flatulence. The cows are probably in league with the tuna, having joined forces over that whole surf 'n' turf thing, and they're mad. (Probably why we've been seeing so much about Mad Cow disease.) So while cows may look docile, quietly chewing their cuds as you drive past them on country roads, they're actually ruminating over our imminent demise and ordering takeout dinners from Mexican restaurants with extra refried beans.

Most carbon dioxide, or CO2 if you text message a lot, comes from cars and is expelled from generally the same anatomical area that cows vent methane. Many cows end up as leather seats in cars, causing less methane but more CO2, which is kind of a wash karmically. It's also the reason you won't find very many Hindus driving Jaguars. Each year 26 billion tons of CO2 is pumped into the atmosphere, which always seems to settle around the Earth's hips and thighs. Ironically CO2 is good for tree growth, so Mother Earth is always saying things like, "Does this rainforest make my butt look big?"

Speaking of trees, deforestation is also contributing to the degradation of the environment. Like I always say, only God can make a tree, but any asshole can cut one down. That's not to say I think we should never cut down a tree. I mean, I'm not the type to climb a redwood and live there for a couple years to stop logging. You'd need friends who are willing to bring food every day and take away buckets of human waste. I have friends, but they're not THAT fond of me. Hell, my wife refused to do that when I was sick in bed for three days with the flu, and I was able to get up to use the bathroom.

The reason we need forests is that trees are the Earth's lungs. (I also believe volcanoes are the Earth's anus and Iraq is the Earth's appendix.) They regulate the atmosphere, temperature, rainfall, erosion and dozens of other things I'm too lazy to research. Besides, they're pretty to look at and on a hot day provide a nice, cool shade. Without them, we'd all have to get out of the hot sun by huddling under Pamela Anderson. Besides, trees are what's called a renewable resource. When you cut one down you can just plant a new one, and in 30 years you've got yourself another tree to cut down. (Though finding it again after 30 years...hell, I can't find my car after one night out at a bar drinking.)

So the Earth is pretty much like the human body and the environment is what keeps the Earth alive. But the Earth can't survive without heroic measures. There's no Do Not Resuscitate order with her doctors if her condition starts to deteriorate. Sure, once she's dead the worms get her, but until that time we should put the paddles to her chest, yell, "Clear!", then shock until her heartbeat is strong and she can live without feeding tubes and respirators. It may cost a lot, but when it comes right down to it, we've only got one mother...Earth.