LOOK AT IT THIS WAY YOU CAN DRIVE OR SWIM IN WATER A FEW YEARS FROM NOW WORLDWIDE.

Amidst record summer temperatures and extreme winter weather patterns that are devastating crops in the U.S. and around the world, the business community in the United States continues to argue there's no need to do anything about global warming or CO2 emissions. This attitude of sheer denial, which is supported by chambers of commerce, the Bush Administration and most large corporations, is so blatantly shortsighted and foolhardy that it was just begging for a CounterThink cartoon.
Here, a pro-business pollution defender is testifying before some sort of "official" panel (which was left intentionally vague) about why we all need to pollute MORE, not less. His reasoning? If we keep polluting the air, nobody will be able to notice the climate change. (Because the smog will block out the sky, you see.)

The logic is totally absurd, of course, but that's the point. It's about as goofy as the arguments made by the anti-Earth, pro-business crowd today who argue that they should be allowed to keep on polluting the planet as long as the "emissions density" does not increase. This particular gobbledygook means that as long as the economy continues to grow, pollution can increase while politicians can claim credit for "capping emissions" even while those emissions are still increasing. It's precisely the sort of fuzzy math and consensus delusion that undermines everything in Washington, from the national debt and government spending to the Medicare prescription drug fiasco or fudged housing statistics.

In other words, the pro-business community thinks it can save the planet through wishful thinking and political rhetoric, but not by actually reducing emissions. They think that passing laws with future promises somehow matters today. I say, you can fool the voters, you can fool the banks, you can fool the investors and you can even fool foreign nations, but you can't fool Mother Nature. The Earth doesn't care what campaign promises were made and broken. It doesn't care what future emissions targets might exist on paper, or how much money nations say they'll invest in "clean energy." Mother Nature only notices what's REALLY happening to the planet.

And let's face it. Humans treat the Earth like a giant toilet. We dump chemicals into the water, pesticides onto the land, smog into the air and sewage into the ocean. We have polluted virtually every waterway, valley, peninsula, airstream, river, gulf, water table, mountain range, lake, pond, forest and land mass imaginable, and yet most of us sit back and think we're "green" because we bought a couple of compact fluorescent light bulbs (which contain toxic mercury, by the way) for our homes that remain inefficiently heated and cooled with fossil fuels. People actually think they're living green because they recycle the empty pesticide boxes after emptying the contents of those boxes onto their lawns. (See my story The Recycling Contradiction for more observations about the problems with consumer recycling programs.)

Humans are the worst thing that ever happened to planet Earth, and the modern day business community is determined to drive us all into extinction just as long as they can chisel out a profit each quarter along the way. As the oceans rise and wash away the filth and greed of America's capitalism, Wall Street greaseheads will be seen clutching their hyperinflated greenbacks as they shout through the bubbling water, "We beat earnings expectations!"

Indeed, we will all die someday. But some of us -- the green crowd -- hope we don't take this planet with us when we go. Some of us want to leave behind a planet that still functions for future generations. We used to be in the minority ("You damn tree huggers!"), but now we're almost considered mainstream. And as the hurricanes, earthquakes, tidal waves, freak freezes, tornados and other radical earth changes unfold over the next few years, even the most stubborn, desperate Republican holdouts and diehard polluters will eventually have to face up to the fact that if we don't start saving this planet, there's not going to be much of an economy to bicker about.

When the global food supply is devastated by climate change, we will know exactly who to blame: the evil corporations that run this country and the sellout lawmakers who let them get away with it. And the last time I checked, that included just about every lawmaker in Washington other than Rep. Ron Paul.

I say it's time to take back our country from corporations, and it's time to take back our planet from a government that's not interested in protecting it. These CounterThink cartoons are my own way of marching on Washington, one web viewer at a time, until the people get pissed off enough to demand real change.

The alternative is to maintain the status quo and, by doing so, starve ourselves into near extinction, remembered as a civilization of mechanized idiots who deliberately and knowingly destroying the only thing that ever gave them abundance in the first place: our planet.