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Hey, mister, can I ask you just exactly what you're doing behind this tree?
Exactly what it looks like--I'm urinating into a glass jar.
And why would you do that when there's a public restroom just 50 yards yonder?
I'm spinning off an idea from NASA and trying to transform urine into potable water with a mechanism I devised at home.
Hey, if you need a drink, take a swig from my bottle of Evian right here.
Oh, no, I've given it up.
You mean water in plastic bottles?
No, any kind of water except that which I capture in my rain barrel at home and which I use to dilute my urine.
You capture much rain in that barrel here in this Phoenix Sonoran desert?
Not much. That's why every drop is precious. Given the devastating effects of anthropogenic global warming, we simply can't afford to waste a molecule. But hold on, give me a minute, please. I'm releasing too much carbon with all this talk. {Appears to willfully retard his heartbeat; breathes shallowly and sparingly.}
Listen, you look bad. Want to go sit on that bench over there?
Oh, no, I need to stay under this tree so it can absorb most of my carbon dioxide, which I exhale as little of as possible. I hold in just as much as I can. Sure, I get lightheaded and queasy, but my carbon conscience demands that of me. {Pauses. Closes eyes in obvious valiant effort to slow down metabolism.}
So, you're a struggling single senior citizen, right? Battered by a depressed economy? Living on a tiny Social Security check, never enough to make ends meet?
Not at all. I have a great pension and a fistful of annuities to draw from, but I care so much about this planet, this beautiful blue ball orbiting around an orange nuclear furnace 93,000,000 miles away. By choice, I have a two-room home, which I neither heat nor air condition. I sweat to cool down; I shiver to warm up. Nature knows best. I have running water, but I am loathe to use it. My two rooms are filled with cacti, which require no water and which absorb and sequester my carbon. I compost. I recycle. I eat locally--lots of prickly pear, veggies from a little raised bed garden in my back yard, citrus from my own trees. (I confess that I do use, sparingly, a drip irrigation system there.) I eat no meat, the production of which is both cruel and environmentally destructive. I ride the bus or walk very slowly. I flush my toilet only once a day, shower once a week, wash my clothes by hand in the sink bi-weekly. I don't burn any lights at night. I don't have a TV or a computer. To occupy myself, I sing, recite poetry I've memorized, reflect, recall, do math calculations in my head, and intone my mantra ("CO2 will kill me and you"). I lose myself in such Zen koans as "What is the sound of one carbon atom clapping on to two oxygen atoms?" The dark enlightens me. {Pauses. Visibly seems to shrink, drawing self inward. Smiles satorically, apparently having found and opened third eye.} In the library--no, I don't buy books; I don't kill trees--I read that Susan Solomon, senior scientist at NOAA, thinks that, even if we change our way of life completely, go as green as the grass above the septic tank on a Puget Sound suburban sprawl lawn, the effects of our environmental sins dating from the industrial revolution to the present will last until the year 3,000. The melting of polar ice caps will raise ocean levels; changes in rainfall patterns will cause Dust Bowl-scale droughts. Environmental chaos will inevitably bring about social chaos. Therefore, we need to act immediately and drastically.
Say what? You mean that no matter what we do to try to end global warming, the effects of what we have set into action will last another 1,000 years? You're wearing the hair shirt, you're going all Essene on our wood-burning ashes, so that 1,000 years from now we'll finally get back to the present? Is that the wisdom of Ms. Solomon or a solemn vow of self-destruction? You're suffering from climate change delusion, my friend, and it's sucking the life out of you. You're drinking your own urine now so that 1,000 years later someone else won't have to? Brother, start guzzling all the tap and bottled water you can keep down. Hydrate. Buy a Hummer. Fly to Australia on a whim. Load up on electronics. Wash and irrigate all you want. Grill a steak. Savor an imported pineapple with its huge carbon footprint. Keep warm. Stay cool. Exercise. Inhale and exhale deeply. Get out from under this tree and soak up the Vitamin D. Above all, flush your pee.
My good man, my pee defines me. Your kind of ugly American, alpha dog, hedonistic, arrogant, masters-of-the-universe thinking presages an ecological apocalypse. How can you live with that on your conscience? Be gone, sir. {Rolls all three eyes toward the back of his head.}
What conscience?
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