COLUMN: Global Warming

This past week, I did an official Good Thing. This is when you do something that enables you to later pat yourself on the back for. Something that benefits the world. In the grand scheme of things, it might matter as much as a tinker's dam. The point is, it gives you warm fuzzies. It is a Good Thing.

My Good Thing is that I went to go see the Al Gore movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." Now, I know for some that spending an evening with the self-proclaimed inventor of the internet might not be that Good of a Thing. But for the card-carrying liberal that I am, the flick was required viewing.

The subject of the film is no laughing matter: GLOBAL WARMING. Basically it's a two-hour romp through the slideshow that Al's been giving for years. In summary, we are all very, very bad people. We spew toxic what-not into the air, the atmosphere gets warmer, and if we don't stop, weird little fish that only scientists have ever seen will die, Greenland will melt, and we'll be waking up daily to Neil Kastor giving us our daily hurricane warnings.

I sat glued to the movie. Mostly I did this because it was too hot outside to do anything else. Al Gore doesn't need a million facts and a fancy slideshow to convince me of global warming; Al Gore just needs to take me outside.

This past week has been unbearable. I mean, okay, there's hot, right? Like, "Hmm, hot one out today." Then there's the kind of hot that's SO hot it's almost amusing. You know, the kind of hot where it becomes socially acceptable to drive around in air conditioned cars pointing and laughing at joggers. The kind of hot where otherwise sensible people begin to ill-advisedly wander around shirtless.

But then there's been THIS week, where the heat has taken on altogether new and exciting dimensions. This week hasn't been just hot. It hasn't even been funny hot. No, this has been the kind of hot where you step outside with a look of puzzled wonderment because you don't understand how you can be in this heat and REMAIN ALIVE. I kept looking up, expecting to see birds erupting into flame mid-flight. Every time I smelled something good cooking this week, I had to look over and make sure it wasn't my BACK.

I am known far and wide for my absolute and total lack of motivation. However, if the weather of this past week has been, in fact, due to global warming, then I say it's time for action. I mean, come on, people -- HOW MANY MORE 16-YEAR-OLD GOLFING PHENOMS MUST ALMOST-VOMIT BEFORE WE HEED THE CALL OF DUTY? The time is nigh.

There has to be something we can do. If toxic what-not causes global warming, then surely some OTHER kind of deadly noxious thingamajig can cause global COOLING, right? I don't care if it's lethal or not. If someone right now came up and said, "Well, we can release this gas to cool the air outside, but I'm afraid it might kill every 8th person on the planet," I'd take those odds. I'm just a huge heat weenie.

Maybe we need to combat the problem by re-introducing CFC's. Yes, that's it. Let's all go outside and spritz can after can of hairspray into the air. That should be enough to re-open that pesky hole in the ozone layer and maybe all the heat will shoot right out of it to Mars. Hey, it looks good on paper. Okay, it looks good on the piece of scratch paper I've been doodling on. But STILL -- I'm being pro-active, and that's what counts.

Some of you might call me a hypocrite, I realize this. I've written before about my love of NASCAR, and hey, that sport is basically the equivalent of raising your middle finger to the sky and going, "Warming schmarming." I know this. So I went to Al's website, www.climatecrisis.net, and looked up the tips that each of us can do to stop global warming. For instance, it says, "Only run your dishwasher when there's a full load." Well, I'm such an environmentalist that I don't even OWN a dishwasher, so there. I'm doing my part.

But perusing the website was when I learned about the REAL enemy. It's right there in black and white. "Methane is the second most signifigant greenhouse gas and cows are one of the greatest methane emitters." I should have known -- IT'S THE COWS' FAULT. So here's my solution to the global warming crisis: THICKBURGERS, and lots of 'em. Every one of you needs to start wolfing down burgers until we as a people have eaten up the entire cow menace. Then and only then will we be safe to once again go from our cars to our offices without breaking out into a sweat.

Sure, we might all die of high cholesterol, but trust me, it'll be a Good Thing.