Environmental Talk

“Oh, piss boy….”

I like to think I’m as environmentally conscious as the next guy … as long as the next guy is Michael Crichton or James Imhofe.

I have nothing against sustainable living, but I’m unwilling to turn a 15-minute shopping trip into a three-hour ordeal by reading labels on boxes of Cap’n Crunch and Hot Pockets to make sure they are made of over 85% recycled paper.

I don’t compost my leftovers. I don’t buy magazines based on whether they use vegetable-based ink. I don’t air dry my coffee filters and re-sew them into clothing so I can “give green” on birthdays and holidays.

I don’t take cold showers in rainwater I’ve collected in a barrel made out of recycled car tires.

I drive a non-hybrid car because I like the way it looks and handles but I also own a bike that I use when the opportunity arises.

I recently switched to using CFL bulbs. I recycle cans and bottles and will probably buy a rotary blade, non-gasoline lawn mower next month when I move into a new house next month.

I don’t do any of these things because of “impending shortages” or because of some fictional environmental “tipping point” we’re supposed to be closing in on. I do it because it either makes sense to me or because I’ve been nagged extorted persuaded to do it by my girlfriend.

Although, I’m on the record as saying I don’t think that a sex moratorium is fighting fair.

Despite all my best efforts, it seems like every day someone is coming up with another shortage that we’re facing “if not in our lifetime, at least in our children’s lifetime.”

The most recent “impending shortage” we’re facing, according to Associate Professor Cynthia Mitchell, is a phosphorus shortage. Cynthia, who works for the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), says the world’s deposits of phosphorus are due to run out in about 50 years.

Phosphorous is used to make the head of strike-anywhere matches and for some military uses like smoke-bombs and tracer ammunition. As far as I can figure out, that means a phosphorus shortage would cut down on arson and war. I think that might be a good thing.

Still, Cynthia works for the Institute of Sustainable Futures, so it’s her job to figure out a way to keep phosphorus around. And she’s done just that.

Cynthia says that “recycling the 500 litres of urine each person produces a year is the solution.”

I’m willing to recycle a lot of things but this is where I put my foot down…but carefully, so I don’t step in anything.

I’ll install energy-efficient appliances, water-saving shower heads and unplug appliances. I’ll recycle glass, paper, aluminum, printer cartridges and string. But I will not pee into chamber pot that I have to lug down to the curb once a week.

Just the price of dry cleaning my neckties would be enough for me to be against this idea.

The whole point of progress is supposed to be that we have more time to enjoy life. Life is way too short for me to be carting around my own urine except during my annual physical and the occasional random drug test.

If we’re so concerned about shortages that we resort to recycling our own pee, at that point, we’re officially back to the Middle Ages and we might as well bring back bubonic plague and a 23-year average life expectancy.

If that means we run out of phosphorous … too bad.

global warming, climate change, Mel Brooks, Michael Crichton, James Imhofe, Middle Ages, piss boy, History of the World, recycle, phosphorous