Like Toto in The Wizard of Oz, at their 1985 summit in Geneva President Ronald Reagan and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pulled back the curtain to reveal the truth behind the terrifying spectre of nuclear war, which their countries were spending hundreds of billions of dollars to prepare for. “A nuclear war cannot be won,” they jointly stated, and “must never be fought.” They omitted the inescapable corollary of those first six words: a nuclear arms race also cannot be won.
powerslides around the corner in a gas guzzling stupid american muscle car that can barely turn to save its life because the engine is too big and heavy
I step out of the car and yell “NONE OF THIS SHIT MATTERS COMPARED TO CLIMATE CHANGE YOU IDIOTS”
I then point to my shitty car and say “I am an environmentalist and I am DRIVING THAT to make a point that at this point me driving THAT piece of shit is irrelevant because we are SO FUCKED right now by Climate Change!”
I get back into my stupid af muscle car and slam the transmission into the raw torque of the engine as clumsily as possible while I chant out the window
CLIMATE CHANGE CLIMATE CHANGE CLIMATE CHANGE CLIMATE CHANGE
My license plate says “E8MYA55HNRYKSSNGR” which is way too long but whatever I am british or something…
I mean seriously, yes Nuclear Weapons are scary but do you know how scientists quantify the amount of excess heat energy in the ocean right now in units that can be compared a la the way astronomers must rectify incomprehensible regimes of force into things that can be compared?
They do it in hiroshima bombs worth of heat energy, in the thousands of hiroshima bombs worth of heat energy.
At least the nuke will be quick.
Hopefully.
The earth will recover eventually.
As long as humanity doesn’t.
The earth is already recovering from our extinction, before we have even gone extinct, for we have condemned ourselves to be an event done unto a community rather a member of said community.
Just look around at the way nature is evolving, as immense as the extinction event we are creating is, the ferocity and impulse with which the natural world is responding is stunning and we are fools to think we are winning.
We have already lost and we are at the funeral for our species, let us enjoy it respectfully and joyously for the remaining time we have.
Just because we won’t continue doesn’t mean our love won’t.