Death and Carbon Taxes

President Obama wants me to reduce my carbon emissions by eighty percent. If I don’t he will tax the bejeezus out of me.

I guess I’ll buy a Prius. Thirty thousand dollars. It gets 45 miles to the gallon. My old car gets 25 miles to the gallon. That’s almost a fifty percent reduction. I only need 30 percent more. Oh, wait. That’s not how it works. My car’s only one part of my footprint. And besides, isn’t a Prius made out of, like, metal and plastic and rubber? Doesn’t that come out of the ground from iron and oil? Doesn’t mining and smelting and molding and all that leave a footprint? So, I guess if I trade in my old car for a Prius the benefit is something less than 50 percent.

My wife and kids, they can do without a car. They can walk. It’ll do them good. Hey, a hundred percent reduction, there. We’ll have to commute together, though. It’s only 20 minutes for both of us. Oh, wait. We go in opposite directions. That turns my commute into an hour. And how do we get all that softball gear to practice when I’m still at work? Who the hell’s the government to tell me what to do? I guess I’ll buy her a Prius, too, and settle for a lot less than 100 percent.

Then there’s my furnace. It’s natural gas. Nice and cozy. Probably my biggest source of dangerous greenhouse gases, don’t you think? I’ll switch to all electric heat. Ten thousand dollars. Space heaters in every room. I may need a blanket or two. Watch the baby! Oh, wait. Electricity comes from big power plants. Most of them burn coal. Don’t they say that natural gas turbines generate electricity more efficiently than coal? Makes for less carbon emissions. Why aren’t there more of those?

Oh, wait. I’m replacing a gas furnace with electricity made from coal or gas. That doesn’t sound all that efficient, does it? In fact, it’s going backwards. I guess I can’t personally get anywhere near an eighty percent reduction until all the coal and gas fired plants are shut down and replaced with wind and solar generators. That’s a lot of wind.

Might take an area the size of the state of North Dakota, I suppose. Oh, well. What else are we going to use North Dakota for, anyway. Oh, wait. Wind turbines are made out of steel and solar panels are made out of silicon and germanium. Don’t we have to mine those? And smelt them? And just how do we get all those turbines to North Dakota without burning a lot of diesel fuel. I guess we’ll just have to build more electric railroads.

Or nuclear. I bet they have nuclear railroads in France. No greenhouse gas emissions there. I’ll just buy all my electricity from the nuclear power plant my brother-in-law works at. Not enough nuclear plants to go around, you say? Let’s build more. Just concrete and steel and uranium, stuff that comes out of the ground. Oh, wait. Mr. Obama’s probably seen Silkwood.

So, I’ve spent seventy thousand dollars and can’t get my total footprint reduced by more than thirty percent. What shame. In the meantime I guess I’ll just conserve as much electricity as I can.

Did it ever occur to you that the best way to combat global warming is turn off your air conditioner?

Oh, I have to go out to Seattle next month for my niece’s graduation from pharmacy college. I suppose I could drive my Prius, but I don’t have that much vacation. If I fly I’ll leave a huge carbon footprint in the sky. I know, I’ll take one of those plug-in airplanes.

Wait. It says here I don’t have to get to the eighty percent reduction until 2050. Oh, good. I’ll be dead. One hundred percent reduction achieved! Oh, wait. There’s that silly thing called decomposition. My decay is dust and carbon dioxide.

This is hopeless.