Why We're Pumping Oil

With a few ill-chosen words, the intrepid Don Young (R-AK) spirits us back into the Primatene Mists of time:

Young, noting the presence of network TV crews, took a moment to reflect on his thoughts regarding climate change, citing the benefit of global warming -- not caused by man -- in another eon to an area that today is frozen much of the year. "We're dealing with the most northern part of the United States of America, and a most hostile climate, and we're pumping oil, and I'd just like to remind them if they're asked where did the oil come from, and I would say this to Al Gore specifically: This was a jungle at one time, this was a forest at one time, this was a fern-laden area with mammoths at one time, and that's really why we're pumping oil," he said.

These glad tidings put PZ Myers in a mood to celebrate:

Global warming will foster the luxuriant bogs and swamps of a new, more tropical Alaska, laying down the deep beds of carbon that will fuel the SUVs of tomorrow's America!

Indeed. It's not just a good idea to melt the Arctic; it's a sacred trust: it's our moral duty to provide cheap, plentiful fuel for the bright-eyed, golden-haired, many-tentacled transhuman monsters of the mercifully distant future.

What about our children and grandchildren, you ask? I say to hell with the little weasels. We got ours, let 'em get theirs.

By the way...I know that plate tectonics is only a theory, and is therefore little better than reading tea leaves while high on LSD, but here's what the world is expected to look like by the time Rep. Young's oil might conceivably be ready for use:


I'm sure the good "people" of Afriscandieuroindiarabiasia will be very grateful for the conscientious, long-term thinking of visionaries like Rep. Young.