Petting An Animal Against The Grain

December 2024

The looming threat of climate change induces such harrowing anxiety that the psychological torment keeps people awake at night and deters them from having children. But listen up, buttercup. Extraterrestrials have solved the problem of climate change, and all you have to do is look at their small, pasty bodies to see how it’s done.

Climate change is awesome. It’s awesome! It’s one of the primary mechanisms for evolution and ecological diversity. We wouldn’t be here without it. Homo sapiens, the greatest of the Great Apes, are a direct result of Earth’s climate changing, and not just easy-on-the-accelerator-kind of change either but the abrupt and unexpected climactic swings that have occurred countless times over the past billion years. To deny the very thing that helped produce favorable conditions for mammalian reproduction is to deny our own biological heritage, the most egregious crime against science one can make!

Okay, maybe that’s a bit too tongue-in-cheek for some people, especially when you consider all these activists and scientists inflaming the fear we’re using carbon dioxide as Earth’s thermostat to create a sterile and hostile wasteland devoid of life. But you know, as far as Life is concerned, we could literally carpet bomb the entire surface of the planet and Life would survive. We may only have cockroaches and tardigrades left after the smoke cleared, but give it a billion years and Earth will have the flora and fauna the likes of which you’ve never seen before. That is how resilient Life is. But that’s dumb. No one is going to raze the Earth just to prove a point; no sane person would even think to do that. No, the real cause for concern with all this fear-mongering is the loss of human convenience.

There’s probably some minimum level of C02 that the biosphere needs in order to thrive and some upper limit where it no longer adds value. Those thresholds have never been defined. But people don’t look at things this way. Ask someone what Earth’s ideal temperature is and it’s like asking them, What’s the ideal deer population? or, What’s the ideal mosquito population? The answer is always the same, whatever is most convenient for human activity. And as we all ought to know, whatever is most convenient is whatever people are most accustomed to.

Pet lion shows owner who is the boss

How about a high-five? Kids pet a wild animal and wish they could take one themselves.Bloomington, IN

But regardless of what rhetoric we use to kick things off, climate change is a very difficult subject to condense into a small collection of words bursting with clarity. No political filibuster, documentary film, or book can fully encompass all that is found within this curious field of study. And there may be several different reasons for that, but what future generations might remember most about our place in the annals of scientific inquiry is how we’ve let climate change slide into the center of three very different ideologies that shape human understanding.

If we were to draw a Venn diagram with circles representing science, politics, and religion, climate change would sit right smack dab in the middle of the crossing overlap. No other domain of human knowledge takes up such a precarious and discouraging residence, except for maybe human nutrition, but that’s a story for another day.

You can see a lot of real science happening; postulating, designing falsifiable hypotheses, recording observations, collecting data from global weather stations and satellite instrumentation, creating computer simulations and mathematical models to describe physical processes—the whole shebang. Of course, there’s also a lot of bullshit science from academics just trying to advance their trivial careers, but every discipline is like that. And everything in-between.

And then we have the politics—the climate policies, the trillions of dollars being thrown at renewable energy and “greenish” projects, the subsidies, the reproducibility of the science, the taxes and carbon credits, where and who to point fingers at, jurisdiction and accountability, and so on. Because climate change is as much science as it is politics, it will always deteriorate into a clusterfuck of a problem for politicians to neglect, mismanage, and screw up because, like most things, the solutions are too far beyond the scope of their elected terms and limited competencies.

But then through some miracle of runaway exuberance, climate change also became religicised. It’s as much a science and political disaster as it’s also a pattern of thought whereby carbon dioxide acts as its all powerful authority. Any confession of flaw or uncertainty in the science, the climate models, or the time-to-act destroys this authority. Thoughts of doubt become immoral while the claim of certainty becomes dogma, whether we are certain or not. This creed has been echoed by climate activists ever since Dr. James Hanson, former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, first cried out 10 years “left to act” in 1988. And then we have the bible-thumping vision of an apocalypse from climate prophets like Al Gore, Greta Thunberg, and Leonardo DiCaprio trying to guide the carbon-emitting sinners toward the salvation of renewable energy.

Now don’t go and getting your panties in a bunch. Of course this is a prickly and combustable subject that should be handled better than a toddler petting a dangerous animal too hard. The last thing anyone wants to do is go against the grain, be labeled a science “denier,” and get their head ripped off by the vicious fangs of environmental populism. Terms like denier and skeptic quickly degrade into derogatory slang and are spit out like racial slurs at anyone deemed illiterate in science or who questions mankind’s own self-importance.

Pet lion shows owner who is the boss

Pet owners... they don’t always know what they’re getting themselves into.Detroit, MI

However, if we wish to advance our knowledge of climate change, its causes, or its remedy, we must not be afraid to scout its unexplored realms, for in our incoherent rambling we may better define the problem and, as a result, a more appropriate solution.

The Kardashev Scale and Measuring What Matters

So many funny things have been, and will be, said about climate change that it’s hard to take the matter seriously. If it was taken seriously, passenger vehicles would be made smaller, the speed limit would be reduced, and cities would reorganize housing and public transportation systems to adequately meet the needs of society, meaning entire blocks of single-family homes would be bulldozed in favor of large, multi-family buildings surrounded by trees and parks, personal automobiles would be banned within the city limits, trains, buses, and bicycles would be the norm, and work-from-home jobs would be the primary method of employment.

Other inconveniences would follow, such as restricted consumerism and shipping laws so that you could only purchase goods from inside your geographic locale, and public bathrooms would not have paper towel dispensers or automatic hand dryers; the expectation being that you dry your clean hands on your pants, to reduce your C02 and energy footprint. But dammit, being inconvenienced is not what people want!

People want big trucks and SUVs that they can easily slide their guts in and out of. They want brand new, black-top, six-lane highways that are a joy to drive 90 miles per hour down, out into the sprawling suburbs to their 4,600 square foot homes equipped with the latest tech gadgets, acquired via 2-day Amazon shipping, slurping up hundreds of kilowatts of electricity each and every day; which is to say our values are so warped and twisted that any correlation between belief and behavior is just an asinine fantasy.

Pet lion shows owner who is the boss

Exotic pet owners do not always know what they’re getting themselves into.Somewhere out east

But of all the curious things that people want, the single most curious want in all of human folly is this one unit of measure, our energy consumption, that people want as the de facto standard when comparing ourselves against the lesser developed past and a shinier, more advanced future. Rather than using a more suitable thing like human well-being, happiness, or fulfillment as a measure of human progress, we count lightbulbs instead.

Origins of this lightbulb fetish can be traced back to a research paper titled, “Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations”, published in Society Astronomy in 1964. The paper was authored by a Russian astronomer, Nikolai Kardashev, who was interested in radio wave propagation and the energy requirements needed to generate reliable, long-range radio communications within the confines of one’s galaxy and between galaxies. Not surprisingly, the requirements are quite large given the extreme distances, but while exploring his theoretical ideas, Kardashev thought it convenient to categorize a civilization’s advancement into three distinct types based on its energy consumption.

It does sort of make sense that as a civilization advances so does its energy consumption. But will this always be the case? Not all trajectories of change occur in straight lines. While some change may be linear, others may be exponential, logarithmic, sinusoidal, or even bell shaped when viewed from afar. And all it would take is one example to show a presumed rate of change is incorrect.

Take a look at the standard incandescent lightbulb. It consumes 100-watts of electricity and outputs 1600 lumens. But what if someone created a new kind of lightbulb that output the same 1600 lumens but only consumed 10 watts of electricity? Everyone would agree the 10-watt bulb is more technologically “advanced” than the former, needing more science and engineering to conceive and build, but it would also use 1/10 the energy of its predecessor while achieving the same end result. So maybe energy consumption is not a good measure of advancement, and if it’s not, what is?

Before answering that, let’s head back in time once more to 1977 and review Steven Spielberg’s film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was a science fiction adventure about some midwestern folks who witness unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and then try to make contact with the alien intelligence. The movie was, and still is, praised for its use of special effects, culturally historical themes, and pleasing cinematography. But besides all that, the most interesting aspect of the film was how the visual appearance of the aliens was modeled after real eye-witnesses to UFOs and ETs.

In his book, Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Ultimate Visual History, production publicist Michael Klastorin writes, “When designing the aliens, Spielberg and Joe Alves didn’t set out to create wildly imaginative otherworldly beings. Instead, Spielberg was determined to keep the film as “factual” as possible, turning to the work of ufologist J. Allen Hynek as a starting point. In the majority of the credible reports Hynek had received regarding close encounters of the third kind, the descriptions of the ETs were remarkably similar: The beings, often known as “Grays,” were nearly always described as being pale and diminutive, with large bulbous heads and two huge almond-shaped eyes. “That species was being reported all over the world,” Spielberg says, “and that made me think there was some validity in the sightings.””

Have you ever seen the movie? Do you remember what the aliens looked like? Near the end of the film, the extraterrestrials land their spacecraft in front of Devils Tower in Wyoming during the wee hours of the morning. A door opens, a ramp slides out, and the aliens shuffle down the incline to meet the wide-eyed and gaping mouthed locals. The physical stature of these creatures is nothing to be envious of. They’re small. Very small… and short. You could probably pick one up and throw it. But the most incredible thing about that scene was how the creatures were completely naked when they emerge from their ship. The aliens were naked! All of them, butt naked! What the hell’s up with that?

How can a civilization so far more advanced than we are not put any fabric over their nether regions? Have they no shame? Don’t they have a formal set of attire for such a monumental occasion as the landing on, and introduction to, the planet Earth? For fuck sake, if you plan on visiting a different culture than your own at least have the decency to learn the local customs and etiquette so you don’t embarrass yourself.

Subsequent family films featuring aliens continued this same full-frontal trend. In the 1982 movie, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the alien shows up naked. In the 1988 film, Mac and Me, the alien shows up naked. In the 2011 movie, Paul, the alien shows up naked. In almost every honest depiction of intelligent life arriving on Earth from other star systems, the aliens always show up as small, naked creatures. Why?

Half the Work and Twice as Far

Have you ever stopped to think how much effort it takes to shop for, buy, and maintain clothes? And you need multiple sets of clothing too; clothes for work, clothes for working out, clothes for lounging, clothes for going out, clothes for weddings, clothes for funerals, clothes for trick or treating. It seems like every activity we do in our lives requires a different set of clothing to comply with what we’ve been lead to believe is socially acceptable.

And then there are the fashion designers and models, the advertisers and marketers, the retail stores, the shipping, the repair and disposal of—all the extra effort that comes with creating, selling, and disposing of clothes. Plus, each garment we wear wants a different method of cleaning; cold water, hot water, tumble dry, dry clean, hang dry, wash cycles. Ands then you have to consider all the extra people and technology involved in designing, building, and selling laundry machines, dryers, detergents, fabric softeners, and so on.

What if that collected human effort was assigned some other task or problem to solve, like human rights, education, energy, housing, the human condition, or any other challenge related to advancing civilization, like housing or energy production or transportation? There are so many more important things in life than the hassle of deciding what to wear and the heaping piles of laundry that accumulate every week. Aliens understand the burden of the clothing. They understand the problem of living.

Zoo keeper tries to pet lion.

Zoo keeper tries to pet lion.Birmingham, AL

So let’s take a hint from our more advanced neighbors and redefine the Kardashev scale to be:

The other visual oddity we notice about extraterrestrials is that they’re puny. Have you ever seen a Godzilla-sized alien, or a morbidly obese alien being carted around by other aliens because it was just too fat and out of shape to move itself? Being small is easier than being big. It takes less food to sustain oneself. It takes less mass to build homes. It takes less energy for transportation. It wouldn’t be surprising if aliens had bred themselves to be small on purpose simply because it’s a more efficient way to exist in the world. And that is the heart of the matter.

Whether intentional or not, ETs have shown us that being efficient is what separates advanced societies from more primitive ones. This is the only difference between ETs and humans. Efficiency. Anybody can invent a flying saucer and scoot around the galaxy—we’re probably not far away from that feat ourselves. But to do it naked and with a flat stomach? Well, slap my face and call me Sally! Imagine how efficient the rest of their society must function!

On Earth, efficiency is often interpreted to mean fuel economy or reducing employees and operating costs to maximize corporate profits. We might hear a 50 mpg car is more efficient than a 20 mpg car. And sure it is, but efficiency would first ask the question, why are you driving a car to begin with? Or rather, why do you have to drive? How poorly designed, or inefficient, is your civilization built that every individual member of it is coerced into purchasing and maintaining a two-ton block of metal and glass in order to survive and live their life?

If we could understand all the world’s problems as problems of efficiency, whether as a direct cause or as an indirect consequence, we would say man-made climate change is not a problem, and neither are carbon dioxide emissions. These are just side effects, or symptoms, caused by the inefficiencies of trying to accomplish some other task.

Efficiency is a large-scale, systemic problem, deeply rooted in society that must be initiated with questions like: Is it more efficient to move people with electric cars or diesel buses? Is it more efficient to have people living in single-family homes or appropriately designed condominiums? Is it more efficient to plant vast fields of wind turbines and solar panels or to have a nuclear power plant? Is it more efficient to grow animals for food or plants for food? Often the answers are in direct conflict with our cultural, economic, and capitalistic values, which thrive under such inefficiencies as mass-overconsumption, debt, inflation, and planned obsolescence.

Ultimately, the world exists in an age of compromises, of half-measures, and the lesser evil. We have plenty of beautiful words full of noble, idealistic sentiment, but a grand, unifying plan to organize the directionless wandering and infighting of the human race is completely missing. We often hear the phrase “modern world” but we are nothing more than a vulgar bunch of imbeciles whose passions are easily moved by demagogues, social media, religious quacks, agitators, and all the internal demons that drive us to recklessly plunder the earth under the collective delusion that such an insane activity represents true progress and enlightenment in a civilized world.

Any visitors arriving on Earth to study human life must be in awe of how much energy and effort is wasted on things that don’t matter or cause us to work harder than we need to in order to survive, advance, and enjoy life. Highly advanced civilizations embrace efficiency as the most obvious and natural way to exist in the world. They shun any political, economic, technological, societal, or cultural process, function, or feature that is inefficient and quickly adopt the straight forward path for accomplishing the desired task or objective, because why work harder than you have to? When we start looking at the world’s problems as problems of efficiency we’ll be able to work half as hard and go twice as far.