Wide Impact of Climate Change Ignored by the Gospels according to Rand

Marquel, the TPV’s NY Times Weather Correspondent read the article on Wide Impact of Climate Change Already Seen in U.S., Study Says and started making waves: A major federal study outlines the sweeping effects of rising temperatures, including droughts, devastating storms and dying forests.

This was a freebie. The natural resource council was taking a planeload of reporters across country and Canada to see the results of global warming. We had a celebrity, Rand Paul, possible presidential candidate, who calls global warming “a commie plot designed to deep six our economy.”

I asked Mr. Paul, “why blame global warming theorists when our economy has already been deep sixed by the bankers.? “

“You don’t understand how much worse it will be,” he said. “Sinners will suffer for their sins.”

“So the solution isn’t more efficient cars, but less sinning?” I asked. He gave me a look that clearly said, “voila.”

Before we left the city we were taken down to the battery. We saw the stain of the sea where it was a hundred years ago, and the modern high tide mark. It was a good six inches. The we saw the marks made by the Council in the last ten years. Almost an inch.

“If the tide rises a foot in the next hundred years,” said our guide, “you can see the entire city will be inundated. It will overflow these banks.”

People were interviewing Mr Paul about presidential politics. We left for the airport. On the plane I asked him how he felt about the clear evidence of global warming on those docks.

“New York,” he said. “It’s the very center of sin. What do you expect?”

“And so, ” I said “we can’t solve the ocean’s rise by less carbon emissions?”

“Ha!” He said, “nocturnal emissions maybe, but that city is in God’s sights clearly. We cannot save it and we shouldn’t.”

We landed in the Midwest and saw a small pond surrounded by total destruction. Our guide spoke.  

“This town was flooded by that nearby river. It overflowed its banks for the first time in history. It’d been here two hundred years. Not one flood. Now we’ve had two in two years. Look in the pond, you’ll see the city.”

Sure enough a whole town was underwater.

Again on the plane, I asked Mr Paul about the flood. He was clearly distressed and said one word which I missed, and it wasn’t “fuck off.” I looked at him and he repeated it, “an ark.”

“An ark?” I asked.

“Yes that’s God’s message,” he said. “Nobody listened. I’m sure the Lord spoke to them or someone there but it did no good. Too busy making money to take time off for ark building.”

“So you don’t think,” I said, “that if we stopped polluting the world burning coal, environmental conditions would return to normal.”

“Did you see any coal there?” He asked. “Any in the river? Any in the underwater town? I saw videocassette stores selling porn and a movie theater showing it. No coal. Sin. They should have listened and built an ark.”

“But maybe they were listening but nobody spoke?” I said.

“Nonsense, God speaks. Man is to listen.” He said

I pointed out the window. “Look at all those towns,” I said. “They all look alike and in fact exactly like our flooded one.”

“So?” He asked.

“Maybe God spoke to another town. And brought the flood to the wrong town. They all look the same!” I insisted.

Here I was telling Rand Paul that God exists, sits above us, and directs floods and arks. No matter how erroneously. I couldn’t believe he’d pushed me into this corner.

“Do you realize what you’re saying?” He asked. “That God made a mistake. Blasphemy.”

“Do you think He’ll crash this plane to punish us?” I asked.

“He might,” he asserted.

We landed in a Canadian town where we were brought to some concrete works that looked like children’s slides.

“For centuries, perhaps since the Creation,” our guide said, looking at Paul, “salmon have climbed this rise, leaping up the river over two hundred feet, to spawn. This stopped two years ago. The water is polluted and it’s over two degrees warmer. That’s enough to kill many species.”

“Multiply,” said Paul.

The man speaks cryptically as if he were dictating the Gospels according to Rand.

Everyone was clearly about to ask him about Jeb Bush or some other hopeful so before they could I jumped in. “Huh?” I asked.

“Be fruitful and multiply,” he said. “The Canadians have the second largest country in the world and they haven’t populated it.”

I was starting to get used to his one-track mind.

“So the salmon are disappearing because the Canadians aren’t fornicating enough.” I said.

“I don’t know how the Canadians fornicate,” he said.

“I suppose like everybody else, one leg at a time,” I interrupted. He scowled then took me by my lapels.

“We are sinners in Christ. Canada is not being fruitful as we are commanded.” He said.

“So it’s not the acidity of the oceans caused by greenhouse emissions that is killing the salmon?” I asked. He dismissed me.

Back on the plane the circus resumed. Instead of examining Paul’s beliefs they were examining his presidential strategy. They had no clue that we were dealing with a Christian jihadist, a fundamentalist nut. One of the journalists asked Paul about a former secretary who had just made allegations of harassment or worse. He handled it like a fencer disposing of an opponent. It was getting late and some were sleeping as we flew back east. I worked my way into a seat adjoining Paul’s for a few moments.

“So,” I said, “a little nooky with the staff?” I asked about the allegations.

“God’s will,” he said.

“Huh?” I asked. “So far you’ve got God punishing two entire countries but for you he’s arranging quickies? “

“Be fruitful and multiply,” he said.

He went to sleep. Smiling.

***

For more jokes one at a time, follow us on Twitter @ThePotholeView.

TPVs CORRESPONDENT

Wide Impact of Climate Change Ignored by the Gospels according to Rand