Aliens Judge Earth And Humans From Space

This whirling green and blue planet, sparkling with white clouds, bright and shimmering seas,

dazzling icecaps, dusty brown deserts, wrinkled snowy mountain ranges and twinkling city lights

Smudged by the smoke from wood fires and factories, wrinkled by roads,

pock-marked by settlements, scratched by the hands of the creatures that evolved here

Full of life from its poles down to its deepest ocean trenches,

its surface animated by the heat stored within,

that amazingly thin atmosphere, rich in oxygen, too rich in our CO²

More than a miracle, though not all that it could be,

spot of life in the emptiness, isolated in a blackness so many light years across,

journeys with its sun ‘til the end of its days

Tilting its axis two times in each orbit, white snow filling the shadow,

as green effloresces under the sun,

whirling in tandem with a huge, silvery moon which brings the tides rippling

and rising in its orbital phases,

seemingly everywhere a beautifully complex set of natural reactions

And one there is of all the species that has cataloged and explained, hypothesized and sermonized, philosophized and capitalized, worshiped and desecrated,

whose work and whose effluvia can be seen from above.

So what would they think looking down from above?

is it a horrid little nest to be kicked hard and snuffed,

or a pleasant, shady grove to pause and relax in?

You be the judge in your home quite safe and warm,

or you make the call tending your fire, poverty-stricken and forlorn,

You show those strangers your wondrous technology, art and possessions,

or hold out your child to them, filthy and emaciated,

and look away as you mumble a confused and meaningless confession

We Rocked The World

We really dried them ugly toads right out and ran over the slow snakes and dull turtles

We bulldozed the non-producing meadows with their hapless bugs and useless flowers

We got baby bunnies on the run and the little fawns shake in fear from our tractors

Our monster dams create great lakes for roaring by drunkenly in our oversized speedboats

We rocked that ominous silence with the empty braying of our powerful machinery

By god, our chainsaws showed all of those old growth big trees just how tough we really are

Replied quickly, ‘who gives a fuck?!’ when they heard that butterflies was disappearing

Casually blew away the precious topsoil thousands of times faster than it had ever been created

Asked just what the heck was it that any freaking polar bear had ever done for us, anyhew

Always pushed extra diesel smoke through our loud mufflers at them squishy vegan cyclists

Exploited the seas with the same brutal efficiency we had trained upon our cows and pigs

Pushed aside the microscopic ocean life forms with a rain of toxic plastic particulates

Realized that ending that liberal global warming scam would pretty much save the earth

Knocked out them lakes and forests with the acid rain from our mighty coal generators

Wiped out worthless desert fish, tiny mice and silly owls that nobody actually cared about

Combined our noisy and drunken recreation with energy-guzzling environmental destruction

Showed our superiority by increasing our population even as we mass-extinguished other species

Fought against climate change by adjusting our thermostats to suit our imported gym shorts

Disdainfully threw out valuable recyclables in brave, libertarian defense of our personal freedom

Said our god granted only us eternal souls, dominion over the earth and a duty to be fruitful

Viewed greedy, unsustainable, eco-devastating development as patriotic economic progress

Went beyond earthly destruction to the massive murder of warfare at every single opportunity

Laughed cynically about their bleeding heart concern over a few miserable little songbirds

Smashed the ancient mountain tops down into their valleys, gouged out the coal and then left

Harshly mocked their profitless recycling, raw veggie diets and misguided environmentalism

Slaughtered the albatross and dolphin as blind collateral damage in our ocean wide strip-mining

Manufactured our food with all of the care the asians used in mass producing plastic imports

Deftly fragmented habitat and cut off migration routes without so much as even trying…or noticing

Adopted as beloved corpro-sports symbols the revered creatures we had exterminated centuries ago

Did not notice the bees disappearance before we had even learned of their importance

Replied disinterestedly: ‘Huh’ when told that millions of trees were dying all across the West

Asked what was wrong with these people who were all so worked up about them stupid frogs and shit

So what if we filled some stupid seals milk with PCBs and messed up a few lame fish with hormones?

Remained blissfully unaware as invasive plant species spread and wrecked entire ecosystems

Made damn sure our priorities were the family, our economy and a strong national defense

Slept securely, having bargained our fictional souls for the imaginary heaven of our own one true god

Ignoring Harmful Economic Externalities

Externality -A consequence of an economic activity that is experienced by unrelated third parties

Silt-filled rivers are no concern of those whose livelihoods depend on the timber harvest

Heavy metals leaching after the mine closed is not part of their successful business plan

Product and packaging disposal or reclamation has no place in an accurate profit model

Emission restrictions are useless job-killing taxes, not production expenses or investments

Reneging on pension and bond obligations permits us to be competitive going forward

We need not consider public services in our housing and commercial development plans

Requiring the cleanup of acid-laced lakes is an unfair competitive burden on coal power plants

We must remain free to emit all our new compounds with no responsibility for unknown effects

Air and water are inexhaustible free goods available to all producers and consumers

Industrial diseases are basically unintended, but necessary, by-products of our good progress

Business production planning naturally seeks to avoid the extra expense of waste disposal

Any mandated expenses distort the free market, but our government subsidies are a necessity

Prevention may be important, but our profit model only requires treatment and drugs

Social programs are horribly inefficient yet insurers cannot compete with government healthcare

We rightfully mine fossil water royalty-free to maintain our short-term agricultural profits

Agribusiness firms do not bear responsibility for the runoff that taints our mother’s milk

Ignoring externalities lowers consumer prices and gives producers competitive advantage

Your typically misguided regulation costs too much money and sacrifices too many jobs

Waste disposal firms derive no revenue from proper separation and safe storage practices

Mountain top removal justifiably focuses solely on the efficient extraction of the valuable coal

Rational consumers purchase based on benefits to themselves, not on some hazy future

A sustainable ocean harvest means fewer profits and smaller dividends this quarter

Soil degradation boosts short-term bottom line and earns CorproAg managers fat bonuses

Our responsibility for the fertilizers and weed killers we produce ends at their point of sale

We are, indeed, stewards of this earth but our profit-bound businesses certainly are not

There is no recourse for the regrettable respiratory effects of diesel-powered transport

The loss of songbirds is sad yet inevitable collateral damage of a healthy consumerism

Disposal of cheap, unskilled, young labor has no reportable downsides for globalization

Deplorably, salmon fishing ends because desert farmers need all of the polluted river water

That the rainbow-hued jungle birds take up mercury from the gold mines is merely a real shame

Real estate developers bear no financial burdens for smog, traffic and loss of watersheds

Should your statutes become too burdensome, our production will move where rules are lax

Dead zones at our river mouths are too complicated to stop and too expensive to restore

We need not book any ill-effects of our canned developments on non-renewable tourist areas

Deposits on recyclables are foolish socialist meddling in lawfully completed transactions

Neither government nor business bears the responsibility for the environment that sustains both

Industry Self-Regulation Not Gov’t Intrusion

Surely logging interests wouldn’t clearcut so far as to silt up the streams and ruin riparian habitat

Hog farmers will responsibly provide us with affordable chops without just dumping all the manure

Altruistic corporate leaders won’t boost profits with cheaper, un-inspected, foreign food ingredients

Surely it can’t cost us a hundred times what it costs Africans for the privilege of having a cell phone

Oil producers will surely have proven tested contingency plans and practiced emergency procedures

Factories won’t simply dump untested new chemicals just because there’s not yet a law against them

Surely banks would not bet against funds they built to fail yet still push them to good customers

Secret internal monitoring will probably prevent rogue perverted clergy from molesting our children

Insurers would never pay commissions for twisting arcane technicalities to deny costly procedures

We also don’t need government death panels making treatment decisions for good family doctors

Unregulated mountain top removal will yield us a safe and cheap, coal-based energy independence

You really can count on wise global oligarchs, meeting in secret, to craft a better world for us all

Trust selfless defense contractors to patriotically hold down costs and not invent bogeymen

Unconstrained, agribusiness will conserve water, provide safe foods and sustain our soils forever

Industries will self-regulate to reduce CO2 emissions even though it may even reduce their profits

Setting the amount of salt, calories and fats in our food is best left to corporate marketers

The Best and Brightest over there on Wall Street must be permitted unfettered financial innovation

Supply and demand will prevent invisible multinationals from strip-mining the open seas of all life

Heavy-handed rules and regulation can only cost hard-working families excessive jobs and money

Industry councils will devise voluntary guidelines to properly address virtually any issue

BigPharma wont push phony lifestyle drugs, ignore 3^rd world suffering and jack up generic prices

The informed consumer will wisely avert epidemics of obesity, diabetes and coronary disease

Lifetime judges would never actively misinterpret the constitution to misconstrue the people’s will

Monopolies, tariffs and subsidies without oversight or taxes are not the only corporate lobbying goals

Investment banks do not use their unregulated financial creativity to blackmail world markets

Lawyers would never let their ads degenerate into despicably misleading sales pitches to sufferers

Real estate professionals nobly self-monitor conflicts of interest, omissions and deceptions

Gamblers, smokers and drinkers can retain control of their lives thru Personal Responsibility

Carmakers would’ve tackled safety, economy and emissions themselves without intrusive mandates

Food conglomerates don’t need oversight for targeting kids with addiction to caffeine, sugar and fat

Merging cable providers actually does increase competition, efficiency and lowers consumer prices

A fuel of blind sociopathic greed guided by short term stock gains yields our globally optimum future

No one would dream of creating a non-profit to swindle duped donors out of contributions

Fuzzy and expensive sustainability policies lead back down the slippery slope of that failed socialism

Unfettered, untraceable access to any type of weapon is a god-given, constitutionally-enshrined right

Secretly spying on our private lives requires no oversight if we, as citizens really have nothing to hide