BITR: How Would I Choose to Die?

I would pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

I was at work today and I happened to notice a book that a co-worker of mine was going to buy. It was titled something like “What You Need to Know about Global Warming and Environmentalism.” Upon further inspection I gathered that what you really need to know about global warming and environmentalism is that they aren’t actually true, or at least global warming is not. Apparently it is a myth created by the crooked media, the money-hungry government, Al Gore, and/or mad scientists who want you to think that the planet is heating up, which would result in very serious consequences for us people.

What an excellent way to die.

If I could choose the manner of my own death I would go back and borrow that book from my co-worker and I would read every single word of it, then I would read it again. I would take in every idea, every fact, all of it. And then after I believed everything that was said in my book, I would go numb to anything else that told me differently. When a news story about climate change would come on TV, I would change the channel. When I would see an article in the paper about it, I would skip over it. “Propaganda,” I would say and then smile to myself because I knew something they didn’t know. I would be on to them.

When I could afford it I would buy a Hummer, even though I don’t have to drive off-road over a mountain to work everyday. I would buy it and cruise around in Trussville all the time. I would leave it running when I stopped anywhere, to keep the a/c cold. After eating a drive-thru Rally’s burger I would toss the bag and wrapper out the window because I don’t want to get my Hummer interior dirty. Besides, it’s not my job to care. The earth is my domain; nothing is going to happen to it.

I could live however I want and not have to worry about how much carbon I am emitting or about how much energy I am using. I wouldn’t care if some corporation was polluting a river somewhere, if an oil spill killed off miles of sea life, or if the sea level was rising year by year. The rapture is going to take me before the world ends, so why care? I could live the way I want to. I am an American, after all.

As I live my life, drive my Hummer, and vote against legislation seeking to help the environment, I would slowly dig mine and everyone else’s grave deeper and deeper. The earth would heat up, the ocean would rise, the polar ice caps would melt, species would go extinct, and I would ignore all of it. Maybe one day when it was too late, when the damage had already been done, I would start to figure things differently. But eventually, after I had raped and plundered God’s creation to get all I could out of it, it would do the same to me.

And I would die and be buried in its mud.