A Big Pile of Garbage

It may surprise you to learn that to some degree I was being facetious in these posts. I don't, for example, actually favor selling the military to the oil companies -- I see no reason why we shouldn't just maintain the current long term lease agreement. On the other hand, I don't want you to get the impression that I wasn't serious about my solution for the depletion of natural resources. It seems to me that alternatives are called "alternatives" because they're not your first choice. You can't just make solar power the sensible choice just by believing in solar power any more than you can make Suzy Jenkins your first choice for your prom date by drinking an entire bottle of raspberry schnapps. People burn coal and oil because, generally speaking, burning coal and oil makes sense. And Suzy was free that night because she's a fugly skank. Reality, like Suzy, is a bitch.

I honestly don't understand why you'd want to use less of a certain resource, say coal or oil, just so that you can have more of that stuff left in the future -- a future in which you are presumably going to continue not to use it. Keep in mind that I'm well aware that there are other negative consequences of denuding* the rain forests, filling the air with pollutants and relying on third world dictatorships for your fuel. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about not using stuff for the sake of not using it.

I mean, what else are you going to do with coal? Unless you know a lot of very naughty children, there isn't much you can do with coal but burn it. And recycling is fine, but I get the impression that a lot of people think that recycling is magic, as if you're somehow saving the planet by throwing your shit in a different colored waste basket. I happen to know some people who work in a building where all the waste baskets are color coded, in fact: blue for recyclables and black for trash. The only problem is that most people don't know what's recyclable and what's not and don't particularly care, so both types of waste baskets get filled with random garbage. Their apathy may have something to do with with fact that they've seen both colors of waste baskets being emptied into one giant multicultural melting pot of trash. Who knows what happens to the occasion soda can that actually makes it to some kind of recycling facility. They're probably melted down into giant shovels for digging coal.

And then there's this whole anti-landfill movement. Thanks to the mercies of TiVo, I don't see many commercials these days, but the other day I happened to catch one where the camera rests for several seconds on a water bottle in someone's cup holder. On the bottom of the screen appears the text:

45 minutes in traffic... forever in a landfill.

I guess I'm not the target audience, because my initial reaction to this bit of disposable wisdom was:

Who the f*ck cares?

Is anyone harmed by a plastic water bottle in a landfill? Not the person throwing it out, who is glad not to have it cluttering up their car. Not the person who owns the landfill, who is happily building glittering plastic mountains of crushed water bottles. Not the thousands of species of wildlife that happily live and grow in, around and through these water bottles. Who the f*ck cares?

Do you even know where your city's landfill is? I have to drive something like twenty minutes to get to the nearest landfill, which occupies a few hundred acres of otherwise worthless real estate, which is in turn nestled among tens of thousands of acres of more worthless real estate. I can only hope that over the next ten years, several million more water bottles will be disposed there, ever so slightly shortening my drive.

The point is, it's not like we're running out of landfill space. I mean, have you ever driven through New Mexico? Do you understand that there are areas in New Mexico that are so godforsaken and desolate that they were able to test atomic bombs there without anyone noticing? You think the radioactive coyotes are going to have a problem with a few plastic water bottles? Feel free to whine to me about landfills when New Mexico is full.

The asshats behind these commercials know, of course, that there's no shortage of landfill space. They are counting on you having a visceral, emotional reaction to the very idea of a water bottle being around for a million years, even though the people who are around in a million years -- if there are any -- aren't going to give a shit about your water bottle any more than you do right now. Do you really think that your great-great-grand-children are going to dig up your old water bottles and shake their heads in dismay, wondering how anyone could be so careless as to throw away a water bottle? No, what they are going to do is dig up your old water bottles and shake their heads in dismay, wondering what kind of idiot buys water in bottles when you can get it out of the tap for free.

Trust me, any future human civilization, whether it be of the Mad Max or Logan's Run variety, is going to have more pressing matters to concern itself with than their ancestors' leftover plastic containers. Like all the marauding bands of murderous thugs, for example. Or all the damn old people trying to escape.

And when people realize that landfills aren't posing any real threat, the asshats behind these sorts of commercials devise entirely new reasons not to throw shit away. Remember when we were all supposed to cut up those plastic things they use to hold six-packs together because the birds would strangle themselves in them? First of all, I don't mean to shock you or anything, but birds die. All. the freaking. time. Because birds are stupid.

One time a bird starved to death in the unfinished addition to my house because while all of the windows were wide open on the first floor, all the windows were all closed on the second floor. It never occurred to this idiot bird to fly down for two seconds before trying to fly up. It must have tried to fly up a thousand times over the course of several days before finally going down for good. Cutting slots in your soda can thingy isn't going to make a dent in that kind of monumental stupidity.

Some birds die from hunger. Some die because they heard a loud noise and tried to hide under three hundred other birds. Some die because they tried to make friends with a plate glass window. It's like they're competing to find the stupidest way to die. The way I see it, a bird who strangles himself for my right to enjoy a tasty beverage probably has bragging rights over most of the other stupid birds in stupid bird heaven.

Do I feel guilty that I'm leaving my great grandchildren a mountain of garbage twenty minutes outside of town? No, because I'm also leaving them the Statue of Liberty and the Taj Majal. Do they have any idea that I had nothing to do with building either of those? Again, no.

So if you want to worry about landfills filling up, be my guest. Personally I think there are better things to worry about. Like what if they run out of cool names for superheroes? I mean, there can't be that many left, right? Or what if they come out with some new audio format that puts to shame the quality of my MP3 collection, forcing me to rebuild my entire library from scratch? These are real problems. But as I said, if you want to stick with the landfill thing, go for it. Just remember that something isn't a problem just because someone on TV says it is. Sometimes you have to think these things through a little before springing into action. Sometimes you have to go down before you can go up.

*And what is with this word? Shouldn't it be renuding? Or just nuding?