How To Save The World

People are wonderful things. Nothing is more precious than the life of a baby. However, there are far too many babies. Humanity has reached and passed the point of diminishing returns in regards to population, and this has posed many potentially catastrophic dilemmas. It comes down to an issue of resources, and an issue of greed. Currently, we still have enough for everyone, but suffer from the issue of certain demographics wanting way more than they need at the expense of others. In a highly narcissistic light, this can be viewed as a method of population control, but it is an unsatisfactory, ineffective and morally objectionable method. The wealthiest nation on Earth, these here United States, is home to about fifty million families who struggle with hunger. This is also a nation that sports a television program called Man Vs. Food, so as we can see, there is a strange dichotomy.

This issue of greed will be made obsolete once we add a few billion more people to the pot. Eventually, through sheer public outrage, those people who have it all will be dragged into the streets and hanged or eaten. Not only has this been a proven aspect of history through instances like the French Revolution, but they did it in Batman also.

That does not solve the actual resource issue, it only delays it slightly. We will still have the predicament of having way too many people to feed, and far too many gas tanks to fill. As we approach that unsustainable number of people, our most ingenious minds will concoct highly imaginative methods of feeding the masses. From this insatiable desire comes the fall of mankind. If we turn on the television that brought us such fine programming like Man Vs. Food, you may have noticed a trend in the exotic food industry that is leaning towards insects as delicacy. Eating beetles in a mainstay in other parts of the world, and let it be known that in China you can get a scorpion kebab as street food. On our own home front, there are restaurants in New York and other metropoli in which you will be served your meals in complete darkness; at the end of said meal it is revealed that you just ate crickets with your salad. Even in our own Bay Area, there are institutions in which you can order mealworm ice cream. The point being: people are beginning to catch on that insects are not only a rich source of protein, but that they are plentiful and less objectionable than eating rats and pigeons.

As the world nears its end, we will notice the consumption of insects as becoming a more common and acceptable thing. They will be sold in bags, roasted and lightly salted, or barbecue flavored and all will be fine and dandy for a short time. In the process, we will also inevitably create a booming insect industry, and before you know it, ants will receive the same government subsidies as corn and soy. Jobs will be created. New fast food chains will sprout up. Bugs will be the new lobster with garlic butter.

But this is America. We like things big. We want a bug burger that is just one giant bug on a bun, topped with bacon, avocado and three kinds of cheese. Thus begins the Genius Genetic Engineer's quest to create a giant, delicious bug that can be fed corn an soy bi-products, or in an ideal sense, feed off of landfill findings. That engineer will make one crucial error. Instead of engineering a bug that will eat corn, soy and garbage first, and then work on making it bigger and bigger, the engineer will focus on making many different, existing, species of bugs gigantic, then see which one tastes the best, and finally they will see how they can get it to eat garbage. It was an oversight a lot of people would make - bugs live in garbage, so they must already eat garbage. They're bugs.

The catastrophic result: America creates an armada of massive insects that are completely unmanageable. At first the defense industry thinks its a miraculous mistake. They take hoards of guitar sized ants and deploy them on our enemies, but this is a shallow victory. America's original intent was clearing a government so that we could exploit their resources, but the giant bugs ate those resources - and multiplied! Within a few years, the world has become overrun by giant flying bugs of all varieties: Bees the size of cars, ants as big as the bees, and mealworms as long as a double bus.

In a panic, the U.S government decides to make supersize predators to deal with the insect armada. Giant spiders were the first thought, but then after rewatching the David Arquette movie regarding the subject they move on to lizards, somehow forgetting the Japanese film genre that deals specifically with the issue of gigantic reptilians.

If you've ever read the butter-side up Dr. Seuss book, it is fairly easy to predict what happens here. Dinosaurs. The great circle of life comes to fruition, and the dinosaur roams the Earth once more, feasting on massive mealworms and the last remaining Americans.

Pretty terrifying huh?
Do you want to prevent the second coming of dinosaurs?
It will take a lot of work, and a lot of "little things" that can be addressed in your everyday life.
First things first, stop fucking so much.
Secondly, and more importantly, we need to take better care of the planet. Outside of the advice repeatable from having watched Al Gore's movie, the Educationally Independent has little to offer on Earth saving knowledge. For more, we will turn the reigns over to our good friend from college, an inhabitant of Park City, Utah, and overall upstanding citizen: Heleena Sideris


Heleena is (ready for a vowel based nickname?) Engaging in Environmental Endeavors Actively. For those of you who haven't figured out the little name generating game, your first name is stripped of its consonants, and an acronym is created out of the remaining vowels, which is based on some aspect of your personality. EEEA - which is also the sound of joy most people make when they meet Ms. Sideris - recently related some of her experiences from traveling to a landfill in Costa Rica. There, she encountered not only mountains of garbage, but actual "buzos," which after some crude research, the Educationally Independent shall define as, dump folk. These dump folk somehow manage to make a living out of sifting through trash, much like Charlie Kelly and Frank Reynolds from the television show "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia." While is it commendable that these people have managed to survive off of refuse, effectively becoming an organic recycling system, much can be said about our present mindset that has allowed for the creation of so many landfills, and migrating oceanic garbage islands.

According to the EPA's website, there are currently twenty-four hundred landfills in the United States currently operating, or recently decommissioned, as well as five hundred additional landfills which are being used to harness natural gasses. However, in regards to years past, other random Yahoo Answer searches claim that the total number, active and otherwise, is around ten thousand.

EEEA provided a few incredibly helpful tips in the conservation effort that can help reduce your daily output of stupid, plastic bullshit.

1. Bring tupperware to restaurants for leftovers.
This is a brilliant one. Not only can you save food, reduce the usage of styrofoam, and refrain from saying, "You know a starving kid in China would be really grateful for that food," (which is funny because in China they're starting to say, "You know an overweight yet starving American would really appreciate that food.") but we can also stop people from making, and subsequently saying "shrinky-dinks," which is quite possibly the most irritating combination of phonetics available to the human tongue - unless of course, it is some hyper-nostalgic individual who will say, "Hey, remember when you could use number 6 plastic styrofoam containers to make shrinky-dinks?" We must all make sacrifices.

2. Buy things in bulk to reduce overall plastic usage.
A side-story: There is a new Chinese/Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco. In a traditional Chinese bakery, all the delicious buns are kept behind a glass window, and the patrons place the order, which is packaged in a pink cardboard box, and tied together with pink plastic twine. In this new establishment however, they seem to find it necessary to plastic wrap each individual bun. In this way, they can have a side-walk display, where all the old Chinese ladies can pick their own pastries and rest assured that the sixty cent food item will keep much longer. This is how you corner the Chinese market - cheap food that lasts a long time. There is an orange in my refrigerator from November that is still perfectly fine. God help us. ***Update!!! These individually wrapped plastic pork buns are actually incredibly unsafe to eat, and should be avoided at all cost. I don't know where it is, so just stay out of Chinatown unless you have an experienced guide. -E.I *** Old Chinese women are also incredibly frightened by Al Gore, and so have little awareness of the environmental issues of today. In order to reduce the usage of plastic from this demographic, San Francisco had to speak the language of old Chinese women. They implemented a ten cent charge for any bag rendered in a grocery store. Now, they all have their own carts and tote bags.

3. Reuse plastic bags. (With the natural exception of those used to pick up pet feces)
This includes things like zip-lock bags. There is no shame in washing a zip-lock bag. The only thing that can happen is your next lunch may taste a little bit like your last lunch. Bacon-flavored anything is a bonus, so really, you're welcome.

Thanks Heleena.

In addition to these clever Earth saving measures, there is another that is not explicitly an environmental philosophy, but a life philosophy passed down by ancient Chinese wisdom. Live simply. It is impossible to phrase this more perfectly than the Tao te Ching. For life changing reading, go here:

http://www.wright-house.com/religions/taoism/tao-te-ching.html

(While I personally find this to be the most amazing thing ever, I do struggle to remember the teachings on a daily basis.)



The benefits of a simple life go beyond the overall planetary benefit. There exists that friend group, or neighborhood association, who seem insistent on constant competition with one another. Who has a bigger wine cellar, a whiter staff of house-help, a more German sedan, a higher number and grander quality of children? Do all the kids have iPhones? Are your wife's fake tits perkier, firmer, even? Can your watch function at a deeper sea level? Is your house fully covered in wi-fi? Is your keyboard and mouse wireless? Is your TV wireless? Is your home-phone wireless? Is every member of your family more bombarded with various bands and frequencies of wireless energies than the Thompsons? Is that weird buzzing feeling you get in your thigh when you don't have your phone on you, but it feels like you're getting a text message, more buzzy?

Life becomes so much easier, so incredibly stress free, when you can look out your window at your neighbor re-waxwing his BMW and think, "I don't fucking care to impress that individual. I don't care to work harder in order to make someone I don't care for, jealous of the things I don't want or need. I don't feel like expending the energy of putting on a fake smile, concocting some nonsense excuse to go over to their house, and flaunt the stupid things I don't want or need. I don't care if my computer is more than four years old. I don't care if my phone can't make light-saber noises. I don't care if my car seat doesn't warm my ass and massage my back. All I want out of my day is for my clothes to match the weather, my meals to quench my cravings, my company to be enjoyable, and for my poops to not hurt too much. Everything else is bullshit."

The day we realize that those friends we feel the need to materially compete against aren't really great friends, will be a very good day. The day we realize that the novelty and endless entertainment we find in our computers and the internet does not come from the devices themselves, but the people - their imaginations, and dreams, compounded and digitized - behind the veil, that we value. You do not love the Call of Duty disc. You love the community discovered in the multi-player, and the atmosphere created by the artist. You do not love the plastic head-set, but the capability of coordinating with a kid in Wisconson at three in the morning who is so dedicated to your squad that he is absolutely going to - with great irony - fail a history class on World War Two.