Source photo: Lunar CausticThe Ohio state legislature is preparing to hear testimony from a 9-week-old fetus, which I assume will actually be a lawyer making a squeaky voice from behind a picture of an ultrasound. The fetus is testifying about whether it should be able to freeload off a woman’s organs while it’s waiting to turn into a person, but we think there are a lot of other bills a fetus should have a say in. Like the ones covering pollution, climate change, and oil.
Here are some of this week’s committee meetings that we think would benefit from the testimony of a particularly articulate fetus who is definitely not a Grist writer making a squeaky voice.
House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, Subcommittee on Energy and Power, “EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Regulations and Their Effect on American Jobs.”
Tuesday, March 1, 2011, 1:00 p.m. EST
2322 Rayburn House Office Building
Chair Ed Whitfield: Mr. Fetus … Ms.? Have you reached the sexual differentiation stage of development yet?
Fetus: Well, I’m only 9 weeks, so I don’t have any visible sex organs or anything. But I have a Y chromosome.
Whitfield: Well thank goodness for that. There are already three girls on this subcommittee; if we go any higher than than 11 percent women, we risk completely emasculating the idea of “power.” Mr. Fetus, how do you justify regulating greenhouse gases?
Fetus: Well, right now, of course, I can live in liquid and my limbs are basically flippers. So I think rising sea levels and catastrophic floods sound like a party. But I have good information that if crops are destroyed by climate change, food will stop coming through this tube, and I don’t know another place to get it. We don’t have stores in here.
Whitfield: What about the job-killing? Capping carbon emissions might cause there to be between a staggering 0.2 and 1.4 percent fewer jobs in 20 years, when you might be ready to work! Because I don’t understand how math works, I’m pretty sure that’s a threat worth completely ear-humping the environment over.
Fetus: Oh, I don’t plan to work. I’m going to run for Congress.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, “Environmental Protection Agency Fiscal Year 2012 Budget.”
Wednesday, March 2, 2011 2:30 p.m. EST
EPW Hearing Room – 406 Dirksen
Chair Barbara Boxer: Mr. Fetus, could you tell us your position on the proposed $3 billion budget cuts for the EPA?
Fetus: Well, Madam Chairman, I’m of two minds. On the one partially-formed flipper-hand, I aspire to eventually be a healthy child and even a healthy adult. For that, I need the EPA to protect the air and water out there, so that I don’t end up with the developmental delays and health problems that accompany air pollution or heavy metal poisoning. On the other, DNA damage from pollution in utero could keep me from ever reaching full mental capacity, which would be useful since I really would like to run for Senate in Oklahoma.
Committee member James Inhofe: … Hey! What did he say?
House Committee on Natural Resources hearing, “Department of the Interior Spending and the President’s Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Proposal”
Thursday, March 3, 2011 10:00 a.m. EST
1324 Longworth House Office Building
Chair Doc Hastings: Mr. Fetus…
Fetus: Wait hold up. “Doc”? Really? Where are Representatives Sleepy and Sneezy?
Hastings: This is juvenile.
Fetus: I’m negative 7 months old.
Hastings: MISTER Fetus, would you agree that it’s imperative for the Department of the Interior to start issuing deepwater drilling permits again?
Fetus: Well, here’s what’s up, Doc.
Hastings: Cut it out.
Fetus: I have a brilliant idea for an alternative energy that will make deepwater drilling completely moot, because we’ll be able to wean ourselves off the fossil fuel addiction that forces us to do things like use unregulated equipment to tear giant holes in bodies of water that Americans rely on for their livelihood. Unfortunately, this uterus is too narrow to contain it. If I can make it out of here without brain damage from pollution, my idea — combined with the existing alternative energy solutions which, frankly, you should all be paying a little more attention to — will revolutionize the world. What are my chances?
Hastings: Not too hot. We need that money to make sure there’s still a war on when you’re old enough to enlist.
