Why Run?

I could bore you with charts and articles and facts, but we’re past that. We’re fighting a war against greenhouse gases with sharpened sticks when we should be breaking out the nuclear warheads (metaphorically speaking).

When I realized that my attempts to drive one less day per week were having little discernible impact on the polar ice caps, I was initially left depressed. And why wouldn’t I be?

The end of human existence as we know it is a downer.

And so, for years, I sank into a null state.

But crippling depression has gotten old.

I’ve decided to get off of my laurels and apply the American Work Ethic to something that is not the American Dream, but rather the American Reality.

Elbows greased and on the ready, I run for Senate on a narrow platform. It’s more of a single board, really. If elected, I promise to monomaniacally create and support legislation that combats climate change.

This is not some sort of henny-penny scheme. It’s about realistic assessment and hard work.

Literally nothing else will influence my decision-making and my political dealing. I will use the power of the law to brutalize the most brutal climate offenders and smack some sense into all of us.

It will be a rough job, no doubt, but it can’t be that much rougher than going about my business like an ignorant sham of a man, willfully blind to the fact that my kids will come of age in an apocalyptic wasteland of our own making.

I will be the first to admit that I’m not a perfect candidate.

I’m barely qualified, and a survey of my personal history will undoubtedly expose me as an embarrassment to myself in almost every regard that does not include this singular act of rationality.

But our federal legislators are doing nothing, and I feel obligated to offer myself as a candidate who will do something – anything – to help us avert turning our world into a low-budget remake of Waterworld. Or The Postman.