On Sept. 14, The Climate Reality Project, spearheaded by Al Gore, will bring us "24 hours of reality … An event that that will focus the world's attention on the full truth, scope, scale and impact of the climate crisis." Its goals: "To remove the doubt, reveal the deniers, and catalyze urgency around an issue that affects every one of us."
A visit to the site's homepage reveals little more than of those maddening countdown timers that reminds us that we're pissing away on the internet what little time we have left in a livable, pre-collapse climate. We thought we were pretty up on “climate reality” — you know, the usual grim stuff about deadly weather and food shortages — but we’re being promised TOTAL REMOVAL OF DOUBT and something so exciting it’s worth counting down to. So here's what we’d like to see from the big reveal:
1. Fossil fuel companies are run by evil clowns who grew dissatisfied with the limited impact they were having while holed up in children's closets.
2. The federal government has a plan to drop Buckminster Fuller-style superdomes over coal states so they can't keep externalizing the costs of their fossil fuel burning.
3. All new cars will get 1000 mpg, and will be made of papier-mâché. Safety standards will be maintained through the following policy innovation: All old cars are banned.
4. Perfection of time travel has revealed that some day historians inhabiting a poisoned, Venusian earth will look back on GOP intransigence over taxing carbon emissions and fog up the insides of their spacesuit-style facemasks with long, deep sighs.
