Speaking of offering solutions instead of just bellyaching, in his last post on Lowbagger, Michael Donnelly implies that I advocate ridding the Earth of the Human Race, in this case, with the Bird Flu virus. Shocking! I am quite used to these kind of allegations because I have been know to hang out with Deep Ecologists, who actually do hate the human race, although they wish the human race would go to their workshops or at least buy more of their books.

Al Gore repeats a similar charge against me in his seminal tome on the environment “Earth In The Balance”. While Gore implies that I’m a misanthrope, the Deep Ecologists all think that I am a communist, and they continue to blame me for creating the seismic waves that led to the break up of Earth First! along its red and green fault lines. I’ve never responded to any of these scurrilous charges because then I would have to disclose my true beliefs. After giving it a lot of thought over the last three or four decades, I’ve come down on the side of establishing an international autocratic monotheistic theocracy with me as the Pope, or God King if you will. I got this idea from a comic book, but there are a few places where this kind of government is still quite popular. I thought it would be really cool, and I even came up with a design for a good hat.

Actually, besides Howie Wolke, I don’t know if any Deep Ecologist that really hates humans. Furthermore, I don’t know if Howie is really a Deep Ecologist, or even a human. But the fact that Howie doesn’t hang out with many humans lets me know that at least he is sincere. Most of the Deepsters hate humanity, comparing it to the outbreak of a disease, but they do crave the admiration and financial support of individual humans. I like humanity, and enjoy following its evolution from tuber-chewing cave painters to keyboard-tapping fools like me. What really perplexes me is human behavior, and a little reading of history has convinced me that we are all insane. But as far as wishing for the extinction of the human race, it’s actually quite the opposite. I’m against current policies that while not specifically designed to cause our extinction, are nonetheless doing exactly that. And while our behavior is generally atrocious, I think humanity is a big hoot. Remember, without humanity there would be no Elvis!

My comments that Donnelly cited on the Bird Flu were, what else, taken out of context. The Bird Flu is a subject that interests me, but I was never advocating that a virus do a job that we humans can do for ourselves; that is to keep our populations in balance with the Earth’s ability to provide for our common needs. I have always believed that if we can achieve this balance we could also give nature room enough to continue the evolutionary processes that have allowed us as a species to dominate all others. If I were wishing for comic book solutions I would certainly have come up with a better idea than the Bird Flu, which is why I came up the God King thing. Not that you will have to choose.

Flu epidemics are not unusual, and they have been setting back population growth locally and globally for centuries. The 1917 Flu epidemic had a seven percent mortality rate, and did not respect race, class or geography. Everybody got it. The Bird Flu could have a 75 percent mortality rate, and will fly coach to every city in the world in less time then it takes you to change planes in Atlanta. Not a day goes by without some article appearing about it in the media. Scientists have been saying that it’s not a matter of whether this virus will break out, but just a matter of when. This is sobering, but it does have its bright side. Along with the high mortality rates, one effect of such a mega pandemic would be that it will likely bring about a 75% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, which by sheer coincidence is exactly what is needed to significantly slow the rate of global climate change. Again, my point is not that this is a good thing. It is wrong to expect a one-celled organism to solve problems that we humans have created. Wouldn’t it be better to implement our own 75 percent solution?

A seventy five percent solution would look something like this; cars would be driven half as much with double the gas mileage. Humans would use half as much wood and recycle what is now wasted for a total 75 percent reduction. You would have to go right down the line on the list of natural resources we use every day. Buy a half as many clothes and wear the rest twice as long. Use a fourth as much energy, and get it from renewable sources. Use 75 percent less water for agriculture and landscaping. Have a smaller family. The list could go on, and many have advocated doing these types of things since the first Earth Day in 1970, and unless you are very poor, all of these things could be done without making any great sacrifice. Much more drastic measures were voluntarily implemented during the last World War. The recent tsunami, while not a climate related disaster, does show you the power of an angry ocean, and as bad as WWII was, climate change will make it look like a hillbilly bar fight by comparison.

Of course if you are poor, then you are not the problem, and you certainly won’t be doing anything unless the richer half of humanity is willing to do something first. Ideally, such a voluntary cessation of gluttony by the rich half could result in freeing up enough resources to bring the not-rich half’s standard of living up to something above decent. I know this may sound crazy and by now you are thinking that it is way more likely that I will get to wear a funny hat and give orders to the world than it would be for people to end their pig-headed gluttony and leave some room for nature.

The solution I am proposing is just too simplistic, critics will argue, and isn’t polling well in Paoli, Indiana. Well tough titty! Just because a solution to a problem is simple does not mean that it is wrong. Go read every holy book ever written and it will tell you to share and be compassionate. Why is this concept so radical? The reason it is considered radical is because it is considered improbable. Humans can’t change, critics will say, and they will have the polling data to support this ridiculous argument. Instead our elected leaders propose more reasonable solutions that will also lower our ATM fees and get us cheaper drugs. This is one of the reasons I think humanity is insane.

I know in this age of multi-culturalism that one cannot speak of the progress of man with out first scouting all the exit doors in the building and having a good driver waiting outside with the motor running. But I do believe in the advancement of humanity, and most importantly, the evolution of liberty, or at least our common understanding of liberty. And while I do not think liberty was invented by a bunch of European white guys, they were in fact among the first to write about it. Both Socrates and Thomas Jefferson wrote about the value of individual liberty in times when the idea seem absurd to many of their contemporaries. From their writings one can get a sense that they were struggling with the many of the same issues we face today. Some of these crazy ideas have not only caught on around the world, but have birthed new forms of liberty that were recognized under our common law.

Of course the Europeans stole many of these ideas from other cultures, but in a rapidly industrializing society, these ideas were essential in making our civilization possible, and none of them were instituted for purely altruistic reasons. Men make laws that profit, none to break. That’s from Homer, a white guy who by most accounts was a poor, traveling singer-songwriter, and it is the first golden rule, and always comes before the do-into-others rule that gets most of our attention but receives much less compliance. Humans only make advancements when they have to. Under stress, like any organizer, they evolve or they perish. If you didn’t already know this I hate to be the one break it to you.

Humans stopped evolving physically a million years ago, but since then we have been evolving in a much more profound way. As the evolution of prehistoric cave art demonstrates, we have been evolving consciously, and rapidly doing so for many thousands of years. We have been making conscious choices based on our survival as a species; using the DNA that god gave us. Because of our success at doing this we are now out of whack with nature. We have entered what some have described as the Anthropocene Era, the first time any organism has every caused a mass extinction, which is usually the job of volcanoes and meteors. It’s not too late to stop this, but it is too late to ignore it any longer. Because of the evolving trends in the way our post modern society thinks, evil institutions such as slavery have been all but abolished, and although anyone who follows the sad affairs of humanity today knows that slavery still exists in many of its most incipient forms, as an institution it is no longer accepted. Today it can only exist in the darkest corners of society, and never by its true name. The same is true for bigamy, which is commonly understood to be another code word for legalized female-child slavery. If we can make such enormous strides in individual liberty, then we can make a similar leap in dealing with the crisis of global climate change.

What we are experiencing at this very moment on our planet is the transition from a hunter-gatherer society to a post hunter-gatherer society. Everything between then and now has been part of this dynamic transition. Our success as a species has taken us to the very brink of our own extinction, and it is now necessary to take account of this. Thankfully we have now accumulated the necessary knowledge to do so. What we lack is the will.

On board the Greenpeace ships there is a saying that the best bilge pump is a scared sailor. If the specter of global temperatures rising along with sea levels, dooming much of the world’s population to refugee status is not enough to get people a little scared then there is obviously no hope for us. On the other hand, humanity could make a great leap forward and work together to solve the problem. We are very good at problem solving, so I am convinced that this will work. The other way to do this is to just give me the funny hat and I will make everybody share or I will put him or her in a dungeon. Trust me, it won’t be pretty. As I see it, our problem today is not that we don’t know the right thing to do; it is just that we won’t do it unless everybody else does it. To solve this problem, environmentalists need to keep reminding the rest of humanity that we have no choice in the matter. Or that actually we do have choices. We can let our old friend Mr. Flu do it for us. We can learn to ride a bicycle and live well with less. Or just give me the funny hat. My only condition is that I not have to do report to a Board of Directors, or spearhead any fundraising charges. And definitely no fundraising reports to a Board of Directors.

Mike Roselle was last seen brandishing scissors and buying fabric at an arts and crafts store. As if he doesn’t already have enough funny hats.