Corpora-genic climate change

There may be a kernel of relevance to the spurious claims of those monkey-brained global warming deniers. You know who I’m talking about: those morons who claim that global warming is just natural climate variation, or that climate scientists are faking the data because of a massive socialist conspiracy to undermine consumer capitalism—those prosimian dolts who deny the anthropogenic part of anthropogenic climate change.

Maybe they are partly right.

Not about global warming being just natural variation or about the scientist conspiracy, but about their claim that the ominous and accelerating greenhouse-gas-induced temperature rise isn’t being caused by humans. At least not by biological humans.

There are seven billion of us on the planet right now. But the CO2 from the lungs of even seven hundred billion people is not sufficient to have a substantial impact on global temperatures. It’s not the mere presence of a lot of humans that is causing the problem. It’s how their behavior is being channeled. It’s what those humans are being compelled to do.   

Our individual planet-corrosive activities are being organized and directed by forces that are not within our individual power to control. We are not voluntary participants. Our participation is induced psychologically and coerced physically. The global ecological catastrophe is not being caused by me and you, Joe Smith and Zhou Wang. It is being caused by the collective actions of several billion Joe Smiths and Zhou Wangs as organized and directed by the global corporate machine. 

It’s not people, it’s Wal-Mart and Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobile and BP and China National Petroleum and Toyota Motors and Monsanto and Bank of America and Citigroup and Verizon Communications and Neslte and Siemens and Panasonic and Wells Fargo—and let’s not leave out the number one corporate greenhouse gas emitter on the planet: the US Military.

(Cue Mitt Romney: “Corporations are people my friend.”)

Anthropogenic global warming is a misnomer.  We need a different term.  Civiliza-geneic (civilization-caused) is a bit of a mouthful.  Maybe “corpora-genic” (corporation caused)?  Naw, that’s too easily confused with “copro-genic” (shit-caused). 

Then again…