Cee Brown Goes Green

Okay:

So I was at the bar the other day.

No surprises there.

I was sitting next to this white guy, a girl of indeterminable ethnicity and a black guy. They were all together, but I didn't know any of them from Adam. We were all just having a beer and watching the CNN coverage of the beating Barack took in West Virginia yesterday. I was silently stewing over how quickly the tone of the Democratic Nomination story can change based on a single primary.

Maybe not silently.

I may have barked at the screen, "Time to put this bitch to bed, Obama!"

Then there was a feature story on Morehouse's first white valedictorian, Josh Packwood. I'm sure some people think this is indicative of a rising anti-education culture in the black community, but I think that's a bunch of bullshit. I'm sure there are tons of first-time black valedictorians at predominantly white schools every May, and that is something we would celebrate. Because, on some level, we still think everything white is superior. Especially when it comes to education.

But that's boring.

I was laughing during this story because I was amazed at how Wonderbread this kid looked. You'd expect some brawny inner-city kid with a low cut who could barely pass for white. But this guy could be the husband in the sample photo when you buy a new picture frame. And I couldn't hear the sound--only captions at the bar--but it seemed like he was speaking regular old white boy English.

But as it turns out, he's been around black people his entire life. He's got a black stepfather, and he went to an all-black high school.

Then I noticed his last name. Packwood. Which, you guessed it, sounds a lot like "peckerwood" when you say it fast. The white guy sitting next to me laughed, and nodded in agreement. We both concluded that since it only took us a few seconds to figure that out, he was probably called Peckerwood the whole time he was at Morehouse.

It was probably, like, his nickname.

Come to find out, the multicultural threesome sitting next to me all work for Green Peace. "So, what's the deal with all this global warming shit?"

"It's fucked up," said the white boy. "The US is one of the largest countries in the world and has one of the biggest populations, and we produce more waste and pollution than any other nation on the planet."

"What about China? I bet they produce a shitload of junk."

"We're about dead even. But they've got, like, four times as many people over there. So what does that tell you?"

"That's fucked up. So should I start recycling?"

"Do you even know how? They've made it so difficult now that most people don't even bother. Especially in rural communities. My mother has to drive all the way across town with her garbage in the car to recycle. Who's gonna go through all that trouble?"

"Not my black ass."

"Not my white ass either. Then this ethanol bullshit."

"The corn energy shit?"

"Yeah, the fucking corn. In South America, entire agricultural communities are totally dependent on corn. They eat it like Asians eat rice. Now that it's becoming the newest trend in alternative energy sources, the prices are gonna shoot through the roof. Millions of people will starve."

"Holy shit. That's fucked."

"Then the fucking polar bears are eating their kids."

"WHAT?"

Until this point I had just been marginally participating in what was a fairly boring conversation. I was also watching CNN, eating some french fries and texting a friend. But the polar bears? The fucking polar bears?

"Yeah. They're resorting to cannibalism because of global warming. All their food sources are depleting. They'll be extinct before you're dead."

"Holy shit." He now had my undivided attention. I thought that he should start beginning with the polar bear line, but I didn't tell him so. "So should I buy, like a Yuris or something? I drive an Altima. Is that cool?"

"Yeah. Until we get some of these laws and policies changed, the best thing you can do is drive a car with decent gas mileage and don't drive more than you have to. Or don't dive at all. And recycle if you can. The major changes have to take place on the government policy level though."

So there you have it.

It's a quagmire. There's not much we can do, but everyone should do what they can do, which is not much.

But we've got to do something about those goddamn polar bears. That's disgusting.


Thanks for reading.



GOBAMA!

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Innocent Question: Whatever happened to those goddamn whales everyone was trying to save in the 80s? Did they make it or what?