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Once again the National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA) has been called upon to assist reticent nations and citizens in coming to terms with climate change. No one truly expects any real progress on the issue as diplomats and climate negotiators and legislators dance around the topic with ballerina like ease. Wonderful and compelling speeches and dire warnings are offset by neanderthal thinking as the planet continues to warm minute by minute. In the meantime, nearly all national leaders chime in that their nations are most willing to limit carbon emissions as long as everybody else does too.

The NUFA commercial fishing representative has once again travelled to Naknek, Alaska for another season of sockeye salmon fishing and some very convincing and compelling gathering of meterological data.
Folks, all I can say is that I’ve never, ever fished on Bristol Bay in 80 degree temperatures and my investigation of the tundra near our little fishing shack at the head of the Bering Sea has revealed a melting of the permafrost much like the melting of ice in a good glass of bourbon.

So…

I will bring the very convincing and compelling meterological data kept on the backs of envelopes to NUFA climatologists, social scientists and bartenders who have taken it upon themselves to try and educate the populace that pollution continues to fill up our breathing space, that tiny, miniscule eggshell thin atmospheric wrap of gases good and bad that keep this planet from becoming a lifeless piece of planetary rock with a molten core.
It is filling faster than we ever imagined and there’s no end in sight as economies the world over have ramped up their economocracies and econocommies as fast as they can dam rivers and drill oil and dig coal from mountaintops that have been eviscerated.

It certainly didn’t take long to convince the millions of NUFA members worldwide that we are living in a very tenuous space where breathable gases, both good and bad, exist. Obviously folks who ignore climate change must believe that gases both good and bad simply float upward from the planet and dissipate into the endless void of space.

If it were only so simple.

Imagine the wrap of breathable space around us. The bulk of that breathable space exists from ground level to a mere 3-4 miles above our heads, that’s it. This great big blue planet and that’s all the breathable space we get.
Filling that breathable space with all sorts of man-made pollution for the past couple of centuries hasn‘t improved our quality of life. The planet can’t digest it all as fast as we can pollute it.

Here’s the one-time offer.   
     
You change your mind and lose the goofy notion that this is all a grand scientific hoax and you drink free at NUFA establishments across the globe. That’s where the bartenders come in. You give up on that silly notion that the planet’s environment is hunky dory, peachy keen and you drink free. Forever. Our bartenders mean business as the planet continues to warm minute by minute.

NUFA negotiators will make the case that developed nations have done plenty of harm over the past couple of centuries burning fossil fuels like there was no tomorrow and creating a life of convenience unparalleled in human history. Healthy doses of Scandinavian guilt will be meted out in portions large enough to change a few minds about who the culprits have been over time.

Time worn facts about excessive consumption will be featured as the planet continues to warm minute by minute.
Yes, we’ll need to drag out the numbing notion that it would take a couple of extra solar systems to provide enough resources for a planet full of people to live like we do in the USA. Since we consume in the neighborhood of 20-25 percent of the world’s resources to be able to host the Super Bowl and build magnificent cities in the desert we kind of forgot about the other 190 countries around the globe that are trying to own as many cars and TVs as we do.

We at NUFA hope that American cultural and political will can confront the challenge of climate change and accept its role in the problem.
We also don’t believe that will happen without a revolution of sorts.
We’re not alone in the exorbitant consumption game. Western Civilization as we know it has now been able to convince much of the rest of the world that they, too, wish to live in opulence beyond what our planet can provide. Fast foods and name brands circle the globe. Who wouldn’t want a talking car and a high definition television nearly as wide as the screen in a movie theater. Give me two.

We’re beyond the tipping point of reining in personal consumption caused by mindless economic growth. Minds won’t be changed in the United States, China or Guatemala in time to save the planet. People want more and America has set a shining example of a standard for everyone.
The Chinese have now surpassed America as the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter. America says no climate deal unless all major economies are held to the same standard, meaning China. China says no deal, they cannot be bound by the same emissions standards as advanced industrialized nations, meaning America.
A German from the European Parliament not long ago said the world is being hijacked by a ping pong game between the two counties.

NUFA won’t sit idly by.

Working with the leading vacuum cleaner researchers, NUFA engineers are developing the first industrial scale carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas vacuum that has the potential to skirt the political and economic stalemate and put at least a Band-aid on the problem. Once completed the vast soon-to-be-patented portable unit should be able to recycle “just the right amount” of CO2 out of the atmosphere in less time that it takes to run your car through the car wash.

Calculations are also being worked out that would allow the vacuum to be converted in the field so it could vacuum up the poor thinking that now seems to infest most modern cultures along with their political structures and feebleminded economies that have somehow blended into a single entity.

According to a lead engineer assigned to the project, “That could be the toughest nut to crack. But remember, it’s only a Band-aid, not a solution.”

In the meantime, I will continue to man the small fishing shack and meterological station on a bluff above Bristol Bay as the earliest ever sockeye salmon unfolds.