People Want Global Warming

 Global Warming: A Satire

I skid past the curb at 90 miles per hour, leaves trailing me in a brittle dry vortex of wind. I’m sweating like a madman, perspiration glistening on the roof of my skin as the sun beats down upon it through the layers after layers of smog in the air. My e-bike spirals over lumps of bodies, dead or alive, and I finally arrive back home from university. In the corner in front of my house, I shoo away some homeless folk cooking their eggs on the front porch, and skimper inside desperate for a glass of water. After sipping my rations, three and a half measly sips for the next 24 hours, I slink away on top of our rustic couch and groan in an attempt to avoid fainting.

They had warned us about this. Almost 20 years ago, albeit, but still.

“That damn government, they keep sending down the waves of heat here. Icebergs never existed in the first place, they just drew our attention to them damned floating things of nonsense to drag it away from what they’re actually doing” my father, stapled to the couch at this point for fear that a single movement on his part would depart needed moisture from his skin, spewed out in a vexatious burst. It was the same burst that I’ve heard for years after years, days after days at end, but no matter how many times I disagree with him, the stubborn old mule won’t acquiesce.

“But oh, I know what they’re doing. They try to blame it on our factories, our so-called ‘greenhouse gasses’, for all of this ‘global warming’ over time? Blasphemy! They have their little machines, rays or whatever, and are pointing it at us from up above to move the sun closer to the Earth or sumphin’ like that, day by day” my father ranted. “They’re killing us and gaslighting us into believing it to be our fault this entire time! That damn government”. A pitted growl radiated across the room.

This time, I wouldn’t even bother fighting back or trying to rattle some sense into him. It’s no use. This scorched planet will consume us in an infierno of our own production, and the witless with the greatest part to play could still never cease to go about their own irresponsible ways.

Looking outside and blinking out sweat, I see the  gentle eucalyptus plant which I used to pick the leaves from as an infant sprawled apart and blackened to a corpse across the yellow grass coffin encircling it. I see the sky, a tiny glimmer light years away in the distance, and imagine the rest of it as how it used to look before the shroud of pollution and smoke blanketed it from all sides and left scant open air to breathe in. I see glass, broken chips scattered across the asphalt road right outside my house from a tossed out thermometer, and flinch in remembrance of the memory of actually using the device to deduce temperature rather than to stir a cup of coffee. I see a retail worker, his ludicrous attempts at selling makeshift air conditioning for remarkably low prices (only $15000!) failing miserably as all of the indigent men and women passing by chuckle at the obvious scam.

Beyond all of this, I see what could have been today, future generations not a burden to be feared for lack of preservation, but a testament to our society’s ability to recover from the brink of deadly existentialism and recuperate in a way of unity and peace.

But as the days go on, even that vision grows blurrier and blurrier, and I fear that it may fade away within the next few weeks, sooner than the time itself when our world finally implodes and everyone melts in one way or another, be it from irreparable economic depression or the global temperatures finally exceeding a point where things are far too hot for people to withstand.

So as I lie here, burning up under the fiery shadow of stupidity from all our communities decades ago in all of their selfish industrial and personal agendas, that final thing of thought strikes me like a shovel to the back of the head. And this, through the rambling of my croaking father to the dry dusty scraping of wind past my wood door, tunes out everything else that could possibly ever bother me in my surroundings. It was the worst thought of them all.

It was the thought that way back then 20 years ago in the early 2020’s? We actually had a choice.