Chicken Little Went to Town

"One day Chicken Little was walking in the woods when—KERPLUNK—an acorn fell on her head. "'Oh my goodness!' said Chicken Little. 'The sky is falling! I must go and tell the king.'"

Al Gore has come a long way since the days when he was moping around the house in his bathrobe all day, looking under the sofa cushions for his misplaced presidential election victory. He grew fat; he grew a beard. His future looked grim.

Al was having a tough time getting over being robbed, in 2000, of his chance to take joyrides on Air Force One. And even some of his hardcore fans hadn't forgotten the slightly tawdry spectacle of those endless vote recounts during which the Al-Gore-For-President Creative Recount Team struggled mightily to include, on their side of the ledger, hanging chads, pregnant chads, and even chads that weren't pregnant yet but hoped to start a family some day.

The whole thing looked a bit unsporting, and that wasn't the only thing. Al is rumored to have a tendency to polish the apple just a little too much, like allegedly claiming that he and Tipper were the inspiration for the book and movie Love Story; or that he exposed the trouble at Love Canal, even though, strictly speaking, he didn’t; or that he "took the initiative in creating the internet," and so on.

But that’s all behind him now. Even the coveted Presidency is nothing compared to Al’s accomplishments of late. George W. got to be President of the United States, but big deal: Al got to be Captain Earth!

It’s been a wild ride. Books. A docu-drama. An academy award. An Emmy. And then… the Nobel Prize!

Al won the Big Enchilada—and for peace, no less! So what if Planet Al hasn't contributed anything to peace, specifically? Neither did any of the recent menagerie of Peace Prize recipients, like the vile terrorist toad, Yassir Arafat. Or that perennial embarrassment, Jimmy Carter, for that matter - although Yassir and Jimmy did talk a good game on the subject. Or Rigoberta Menchu, that fraud, who proved that even lying, Marxist, gravy train hobos like herself can still get a fast plane ride to Stockholm if the political tailwinds are favorable.

Still, who would have believed that there was a Nobel on the shelf for Al? How do you motivate a bunch of old ninnies who live in a place guaranteed to have nine months a year of brain-numbing sub-Arctic cold at the absolute northern edge of nowhere - how do you get that crowd whipped into a fearful frenzy about the WARMING of anything?

Well, you can’t. The fact is that they gave the peace medallion to Al for other reasons. (“Castigate the industrial West and win a prize!”)

Arafat, Carter, Menchu, et al - those awards are not the hoof prints of your standard collection of conservationist crackpots and free-range tree huggers. Al’s global enthusiasms are beside the point. The Nobel panel is a different sort of beast - a political animal. “Bugger the details of this global warming thing,” seemed to be the general tone on the Prize Committee. “I like the cut of this Gore fellow’s jib.”

During the Deluge According to Al, the oceans will rise up and swamp the arid precincts of Kansas and Missouri. We'll be fishing for trout off ledges in the Rockies, and there will be beachfront property high in the Appalachian Mountains. Suntan enthusiasts will compete with moon shiners for the best spots to spread out.

And who’s to say Al isn’t right? Who can prove it? Everybody likes to drag out the 70's version of this story - global cooling - as if they've uncovered some grand canard. Sure, global cooling hasn’t come to pass just yet. But so what? This isn't over, and it never will be. The globe will be cooling and warming and cooling again forever, and nobody will ever be able to prove that it's not our fault.

Surely every blink of the human eye is a horrible affront to Nature. It must be so. What else are we to think, when there are surely too many of us for our own good; when our very existence fouls the land and the water, and every breath we exhale helps convert the oceans to a boiling, toxic stew? Or so say Chicken Little, and Henny Penny, and Cocky Locky, and Goosey Poosey. And Al.

From Zero Population Growth through The Late Great Planet Earth, from the ozone layer to global cooling to global warming - right through to whatever comes next - stalwart nags like Al have been telling the true believers that WE are the problem for so long, we reflexively roll over and beg for forgiveness, and for further instruction on how to do better - how to leave a smaller, lighter ‘footprint’ upon the sad and angry face of the Earth.

The Earth hates us; we know that now, thanks to Al and his friends. Yes, fish befoul the water with their effluvium, and never give it a thought. But fish are part of Nature, whereas we are... something else.

Besides, there's money in this thing. Companies like the one Al is invested in can sell "carbon credits" the way the Vatican used to sell Papal indulgences, and who's the wiser?

Al’s really onto something this time. He’s a Big Picture guy, and the picture doesn’t get any bigger than this. Why settle for even a grand role on the great stage when he can be Captain Earth? What’s more important than Everything in the World, and the world, too?