In this episode of Not The Babylon Bee but Pretty Damn Close…
Climate alarmists through the years have tried everything from scary phrases — the existential threat to mankind, et al. — to predictions that never came true to cute little “how to” guides on reducing one’s so-called “carbon footprint,” which alarmists like Al Gore, Leo DiCaprio, and Joe Biden incessantly preach to the rest of us while totally ignoring the mass amounts of fossil fuel they burn on a regular basis..
Welp, according to a New York Times op-ed, it appears that one of the most effective methods of reducing our individual carbon footprint has been right under our noses the whole time. Literally. Hint: the closer our noses are to the ground, the smaller our carbon footprint. Yup, the shorter you are, the fewer anthropogenic carbon emissions you generate. Confused? Don’t be; this is a complete crock of crap.
Incidentally, that’s Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg in the feature image, who tops out at four feet 11 inches and must have a tiny carbon footprint to go along with her limited stature, but I digress.
Anyway, here’s writer Mara Altman, author of “Gross Anatomy,” via the Times:
From where I stand — at five feet even — being tall is a widely held fantasy of superiority that long ago should have been retired.
[…]
There is an ongoing debate about the stature of a population and what it means for the prosperity and fairness of a nation, but I’m interested in shortness on an individual level. Our success as individuals does not depend on beating up other people or animals. Even if it did, in an era of guns and drones, being tall now just makes you a bigger target. The short are also inherent conservationists, which is more crucial than ever in this world of eight billion.
Thomas Samaras, who has been studying height for 40 years and is known in small circles as the Godfather of Shrink Think, a widely unknown philosophy that considers small superior, calculated that if we kept our proportions the same but were just 10 percent shorter in America alone, we would save 87 million tons of food per year (not to mention trillions of gallons of water, quadrillions of B.T.U.s of energy and millions of tons of trash).
Altman’s solution?
When you mate with shorter people, you’re potentially saving the planet by shrinking the needs of subsequent generations. Lowering the height minimum for prospective partners on your dating profile is a step toward a greener planet.
Yep, there’s another box to check off in your search for that perfect partner: the shorter, the better. According to Altman:
Short people don’t just save resources, but as resources become scarcer because of the earth’s growing population and global warming, they may also be best suited for long-term survival (and not just because more of us will be able to jam into spaceships when we are forced off this planet we wrecked).
Uh-huh, not insane in the least.
Finally, Altman’s vision of the perfect future is almost as nutty as her view of the present:
The future I envision is different: I want my children’s children to know the value of short. I want them to call themselves “short drinks of water” with “legs for minutes.” While one yells, “I’m the shortest,” I hope the other will bend his knees to gain an advantage, shouting, “No, I’m the shortest!”
We’re obviously going to need to redesign grocery stores in the future, gang. We’re either going to need shorter shelves or perhaps…