Overkill

Of course China's one-child policy had a lot of side effects. Those problems were entirely predictable, and you can bet the Chinese leadership saw them coming. And allowing for a second child now will alleviate their coming demographic slump somewhat.

(Although, quite frankly, if the spam section of my various websites is any indication, I assume China's number-one industry now is spambots hawking shitty knock-off merchandise. No, asshole, I'm not going to buy a counterfeit designer handbag or NFL jersey from your 55-character-URL shitball website. I mean, if that's all they're going to do, why the fuck do we need more of them? Fucking die already.)

But nowhere in the linked interview is the acknowledgement that the one-child policy was a demographic as well as an economic necessity, and that China still has close to 1.5 billion people. The current populations in many of the East and South Asian countries right now is unsustainable, and have adversely affected their environments. What will it look like in another generation, with India and China approaching 2 billion each, with Indonesia pushing half a billion, Pakistan and Bangladesh around a quarter billion each?

At this very moment, one out of every three human beings currently alive resides in either China or India. One in every two -- every second person -- is in Asia. This concentration has already had a negative impact on those areas, as has Africa's population explosion. The U.S., with just five percent of world population and over three million square miles of territory, is comparatively blessed with low population density. But we still manage to have an outsize effect on the environment, both at home and in the countries that produce our consumables.

But it doesn't really matter who or where, so much as how many overall. We're over seven billion, nearing eight, predicted to be between nine and ten billion by 2050. Just as there is a physical limit to which we can push, for example, the ppm rate of carbons in the atmosphere, so there is also a carrying capacity of humans that the planet can handle, all of them eating, drinking, shitting, fucking, dumping their garbage, building houses. Many of them live super-size lives, consuming more, driving gas guzzlers, sport-hunting endangered species, and so on. There is a point of equilibrium to these things, and you don't generally find that point until it's been crossed, and it's too late.

I'm not ready to go completely antinatalist, here or in Asia. But there has to be some shared responsibility at some point in managing this; the world population cannot continue to grow infinitely. Depleted freshwater aquifers, ravaged wildlife and environment, and a whole host of social evils, from religious-based oppression to slavery, are all consequences of too many rats stuffed together into too small a cage. The cruel and ruthless subjugate the pliant and weak, perpetuating suffering as much as anything else for many.

It will be looked at as yet another instance of Western imperialist encroachment, and perhaps it is. But overpopulation is something that affects everyone around the world, and as the world gets ever more interdependent, it will more and more become everyone's problem.

Wondering Where the Lions Are

While the spontaneous outrage over the senseless murder of a magnificent, endangered animal is heartening, it's not enough to even scratch the surface. Some 600 lions (out of about 30,000 total, so 2%)are killed by hunters every year; some two-thirds of those hunters are American. Finally the US Fish and Wildlife Service, after declining the opportunity last year, is looking into reclassifying lions from "threatened" to "endangered" status. This would ban the importation of "trophies" and other such totems for over-compensating douchebags with too much money and not enough penis.

Fuck Walter Palmer, right in the fucking eye socket with a rusty corkscrew. I respect hunters who stock their freezers for the winter, and work with wildlife ecosystems. There is a legitimate role for deer and duck hunters. But I have no respect for rich cocksuckers who just enjoy killing shit. So I'm sincerely joyful that, at least for the time being, Palmer's practice and life appear to be ruined. He's a liar and a poacher and a piece of shit. He spends more money than most hard-working people earn in a goddamned year for the cheap thrill of killing an increasingly scarce animal. Seems like Viagra or enlargement surgery would be more cost-effective.

It's been impressive to see how quickly the popular tide was turned against the currently pre-eminent symbol of division and hate, the confederate flag. The only thing good about that flag is that it comes in two-ply. If I wasn't such a lazy bastard I'd get a full-sized flag, make a video of myself taking a massive, steaming, soupy, vodka-and-beef-jerky dump on it, then wiping my ass with it, and driving to some "sacred" traitor loser monument and leaving it on Nathan Bedford Fucking Forrest Gump's bronzed fool head.

Fuck that flag and everything it stands for. But what it took for the tide to take a righteous turn was a tragic catalyzing event. Since that event and the righteous shitstorm, there has been some pushback, but mostly of the useless-white-noise ('scuse the pun) variety on Facebook. The only ones getting out there on the issue are the lunatic racist fringe, the knuckle-dragging shitbags that even hardcore teabaggers can't defend.

Maybe the same thing can happen here, with trophy hunting. The trophy hunters are bad enough, but they are at least technically legal, so they can be kept track of. Illegal hunters and poachers are worse, lurking in the shadows, waiting opportunistically, uncaring about the destruction they cause. Habitat encroachment is a huge problem as well, but one that could be managed, theoretically.

Most of us wonder from time to time what we might do if somehow awarded with what I would call "walking away" money, the kind of eight- or nine-figure windfall that would enable you to either be like some clichéd Powerball loser, or make a real difference. I shit you not that in such an event, I'd put some serious money toward rounding up a team of mercenaries, real Delta Force / Soldier of Fortune types, and just give them a hefty year's wages to go find every poaching gang or individual within 500 miles of a nature preserve, and skull-fuck the lot of them with Kalashnikovs.

I don't even care if they're poor villagers with families to feed; it is not the role of endangered animals to go extinct in order to support overpopulation of the human virus. That too is the fault of wealthier countries, though, since they pay dearly to either kill the animals or to harvest their parts for trophies or aphrodisiacs. Vicariously it'd be wonderful to hunt those fuckers down as well.

Realistically, I think we're at an impasse. Tigers are already nearly gone -- there are more tigers in Texas than in the rest of the world combined, and that has been the case for some time -- and elephants, lions, and rhinos are not that far behind. The fucking Chinese, who are almost solely responsible for the use of tiger parts, need to start cracking down on their gluttonous idiots, the way they control everything else in their citizens' lives.

I'd happily send my big-money Delta team to the tiger ranches as well, tune up those motherfuckers and their shitbird customers. These are people who add nothing to the world, they just take and kill and destroy. Fuck them. Let them find honest work. Seriously, is every dick broken over there or something, is there that much of a need to send everything into extinction because they can't get a fucking boner?

But China won't crack down on them, won't do anything about any of this. The tigers will be gone soon enough, followed by the other species mentioned, but there will be ever more humans, breeding, greeding, grasping, killing, fucking, sucking their way to oblivion. Most humans do not hate the earth and its wondrous creations, but those that do, that vile minority, do so with impunity, and have scaled their heedless destruction to the point of no return. We do not need an infinite supply of eaters in those already over-supplied areas, we need more of our precious wildlife resources and ecosystems. And we don't need any more assholes who self-actualize by destroying the rare and the beautiful.

The fucking meteor can't hit soon enough.

Built to Spill

It's close enough to the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent environmental catastrophe that a rupture or puncture of a 65-year-old underground pipeline running across Arkansas rings a familiar tune. That tune, of course, is Tough shit, Hopalong.

The photo you see at right is exactly what it appears to be:  a metric fuckton of paper towels spread out over the Pegasus pipeline spill in Mayflower, Arkansas. It looks like a punchline, something from The Onion. Friends 'n' neighbors, it is not a fucking joke. It is real.

Imagine, just for a second, that that's your backyard, and that because that is technically not "oil" but tar sand bitumen, not only is it much more toxic to the environment to extract in the first place, and way more toxic to the environment it's spilled into than regular oil would have been, but a loophole exempting bitumen allows Exxon to not have to contribute to the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. Yes, seriously. Oh, they'll spring for paper towels and pressure washers and private security thugs to thump anyone with a camera. Are they also going to buy new houses for these people, a new water table for them to draw from? This is a bit more complicated than rinsing off a few ducks.

Look. We all use some energy, we all have computers, most of us have TVs and appliances, most of us have cars. Anytime someone has the nerve to point out the indifference of the energy industry to the environmental havoc they wreak, there's always some blustery asshole to pop up and declaim the supposed hypocrisy.

Well, no. There's nothing hypocritical in pointing out that tar sand extraction is inherently destructive, that this shit has to be steamed and solvented out of the ground, and that its hyperviscosity requires it to be diluted just to move through a pipeline. It doesn't flow; it's not oil. It's tar.

More pernicious is the idea that propagating this toxic sludge, and the inherent corporate media blackouts and no-fly zones that have naturally followed it, are not only normal, but necessary to maintain the twin capitalist holy grails of Jobs and Energy Independence. The pipelines, including the proposed giant Keystone XL pipeline, are not to transport the oil or bitumen to your friendly neighborhood Gas 'n' Go so's you kin save five cents a gallon driving your Excursion to the post office by yourself. The pipelines all run to Texas, because that's the simplest way to get it to the refinery and thence to a tanker to export it to the highest bidder.

There are really two (at least) huge questions which deserve to be discussed and thought through with some intention and deliberation, before just writing off other people's lives and homes to The Cost of Doing Business. First is the energy question itself, and while we may need fossil fuels for a variety of things for the time being, the fact is that if we can provide billions of dollars per year in tax writeoffs for oil companies, then we can sure as hell push some money into innovating solar tech to where it's more viable and affordable.

That's how the infamous Solyndra found itself out of business -- not because it was a ripoff or a boondoggle or an elaborate Obammy embezzlement scheme, but because the Chinese gubmint, using this principle called "economy of scale" which also happens to be available to our gubmint, dumped billions of dollars into it, and the measly $600M loan Solyndra had could never keep up with that, not in a country where 20% of the GDP -- which includes operating costs for any large business -- is gone down the poopchute of the health-care racket.

The other question does not solely relate to the Pegasus spill, though Exxon's behavior since the disaster certainly exemplifies the behavior -- the propensity for corporations, when caught fucking up or doing something they know is illegal or disgusting, rather than taking care of the problem and moving forward, either push people around to get their way, or simply get their dogsbodies in Congress to make it illegal to observe and report the evil shit they do.

There's no rhetorical question or call to action this time around, no cri de coeur asking you if you want to live in a country like that. It's not a question -- you live in a country exactly like that.

Which brings us full circle to the bullshit debate over the Keystone XL. The answer is the same as for fracking -- if you're not willing to have it in your own backyard, then shut the fuck up about putting it in everyone else's. When Nebraska Senator Mike Johanns -- a flyover-country Republican, mind you -- is balking at putting the Keystone through his state because of the small fact that it sits over one of the world's largest aquifers, maybe that's a clue to the kids in the cheap seats that this is not a bunch of tree-humping granola-munchers telling the world to ride bicycles for the rest of their lives.

It's what has become an annual alarm, as we head into another year of extreme weather events and corporate screw-ups and coverups and such like, of a brutalized, exploited planet plotting its eventual revenge. All the pseudo-debates between oil-company shill-scientists won't change the fact that nature bats last, always.