The Wonder Springs Chronicle

Special Report: A Christmas Hunt

14 December 2009

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Today the United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen focuses upon “Earth Journalism Awards” among other interesting topics. In efforts to provide a little “fresh insight” into this unique conference in human history the Wonder Springs Chronicle would like to post this little contribution. We don’t claim that it is journalism, nor even a good story, probably more of a simple fairy tale, concocted not by climate change skeptics, but true believers, in this continuing universal principle. It however, probably doesn’t spin this reality in a way that would find a wide audience among our Copenhagen friends.

We live in troubling times, and readers of knuckle dragging blogs such as the Wonder Springs Chronicle and other publications and programs are being told they are unenlightened, stupid, naysayers, who only believe in some fictional deity, guns, and real money. Therefore for our loyal readers please understand that this really is a tale of real fiction and worldly wisdom, which you might fully not understand. It attempts mythically to bring together for a hunting trip in the backwoods two of the most enlightened progressives of all time, namely Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt and Albert (Al) Gore. It must be pointed out that these two men lived a century apart, we therefore need some license with reality to make this fictional trip happen, so we have creatively decided to have this trip begin today, December 14, 2009, but to focus upon the technology of a century ago, that would be December 14, 1909.

Our story is set in a hunting camp in Northwestern Montana, at one of President Roosevelt’s favorite hunting spots. He has been camping at the location a couple of days before Vice President Gore arrives, by horseback, sometime in the evening before our story begins.

Teddy: Good morning Al, Merry Christmas. How did you sleep?

Al: Happy Holidays Teddy. Dang, I almost froze to death, I mean the ten wool blankets you gave me to keep warm just didn’t seem to do the job. And did you realize the fire in the tent stove went out about midnight. Why didn’t you get up and feed the fire, that canvas tent was as cold as that eternal hotspot, if you catch my drift?

Teddy: Well Al, you see it is this way, I was President of these here United States and you were just a Vice President. I think that means you work for me, not the other way around. More to the point if you had not spent the whole night whining about being cold and gotten up and stoked the fire yourself, you might have gotten your blood circulating and not have been so cold. More to the point, the canvas tent, the wool blankets, and the wood stove are about as carbon neutral as you can get. I thought you believed in that sort of thing.

Al: You’re right Ted, I’m just not acclimatized to this rapid cold change from staying in five star hotels, traveling on my private jet, and my home back in Tennessee. Also you know methane flatulence is produced by the sheep that was the source of the wool, why didn’t you have some modern petroleum based sleeping bags, I’m sure I would have slept very toasty in a nice synthetic bag?

Teddy: Al, get this straight you can call me Teddy, Theodore, Mr. President, but Ted is off limits. Now I know something that will make your day, I had some special bear steak brought in for this hunt, for I know you no longer eat meat from ruminate animals. There is nothing better than a big steak and eggs, washed down with some kinnikinnik and birch leaf tea to get you ready for a good day of the hunt. If we are really lucky we can shoot a couple of deer, an elk, and maybe a moose. That should really cut down on the flatulence from the greenhouse gas, methane, produced by wild animals and should carbon neutralize the wool blankets.

Al: Good point Teddy, but I still do eat beef when I am with my friends, and I consider you a friend. To be totally honest I really like cheeseburgers a lot, can’t you tell, and there surely is nothing wrong with a good rib-eye steak every now and then. We really share so much in common, you know, saving the world from all those robber barons and polluters.

Teddy: Man I sure do love meat, I’m glad you do too Al. I sure have problems with this tea however, I know it is good for me, but a good cup of Fair-Trade black coffee, sometimes with a shot of snaps, keeps your blood circulating for that ten-mile ride to the hunting grounds.

Al: Ten miles to the hunting grounds, that ride sure sounds good, where’s the 4x4 pickup, or the ATV?

Teddy: A pickup, an ATV, you are sure getting soft in your new age-old age. The ride I’m talking about is on horses. The outfitter has them all saddled up and I’m ready to get started.

Al: Horses again, I was willing to ride a horse into camp, because I thought it would be a good photo-op but today I can hardly walk. Could I just stay in camp, and check my email. I’m expecting this great opportunity to be on the TV show, “The Big Bang Theory” to thank Sheldon for proving that I am right about global warming, and all my critics are just uneducated flat earth knuckle-draggers. For they just can’t or won’t understand the science that clearly shows the world, as we know it, is about to cease. Did you catch my speech at Copenhagen?

Teddy: Sorry Al, “The Big Bang Theory” is just television fiction. So if in a future episode what happens if Sheldon’s mom’s prayers are answered and he goes to a revival service and gets saved and plans on becoming a missionary in Nepal. Also I didn’t catch the speech in Europe, you see it was only a warp in the space-time continuum that I am here at all, and your so-called knuckle-draggers were the ones who arranged this twenty-first century gig for me, once it is over, it is back from the future. Now get your sorry behind on that gelding, we are burning light and warmth.

Al: Teddy, I need to ask a question? What’s a gelding?

Teddy: That’s the brown horse over there without the Rocky Mountain Oysters, if you get my drift. By the way you mount the horsey from the left side.

Al: I know that Teddy, I saw that on my seventy-inch plasma. You know those pictures are so lifelike they look real enough to become reality.

Teddy: Sure Al, almost like real, it’s a fancy television Al, for crying out loud, this is reality, well at least fictional reality. Which reminds me did you know that maybe only ten thousand years ago this very spot was covered with several thousand feet of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet? Those kooky dudes that brought me here to meet with you think the time frame could be much less than that. They point to real scientific evidence as supporting their case. But anyway you slice and dice it that is real global warming that I can believe in.

Did you know I once taught Sunday School? And then there are those pesky Jews that think this is 27 Kislev 5770, the third day of Chanukah. Truthfully Al, I started this gig last Friday and have been waiting here for you to start our hunt. So I lit the first Chanukah candle at dusk Friday evening and took both the Shabbat, Saturday, and the Lord’s Day, Sunday, off. You have to realize that this time travel thing is really stressful, so I just needed a couple of days to reflect on the whole trip, especially in an eternal context.

Al: Mr. President do your really believe in all that formal religious dogma? I have always thought of you as the father of American Progressivism, You are my idol dude!

Teddy: Listen Tubby, I said you could call me Teddy, Theodore, or Mr. President. Any President of the United States of America is never to be referred to as a dude. Even though the current President sort of likes to be familiar with the folks, you don’t call him the Obama dude. Do you think it is appropriate for me to call you the vice dude? Perhaps the dude of climate vice, or how about the pimp?

Al: Of course I don’t like being called the climate vice dude. Do you think you are just some Roughrider that can do and say whatever he wants? After all I won a Nobel Prize for my earth saving movie “An Inconvenient Truth.” I also got an Oscar for the show. I have made it my life’s work to save the world from the horrors of carbon dioxide emissions which cause global warming. I am attempting to follow in your Progressive steps.

Teddy: You know when you have been in the ground over ninety years you realize that real reality is really formal religious dogma. All the rest of the religions of the world, like what you and your so-called scientific friends are trying to promote is really a formal religion as old as the world itself. The historic name is Babylon, you used to call it Global Warming, and now you call it Climate Change, but people are beginning to find out that a lot of your science is based upon the hopeful lie that humanity can save itself, from itself, by atheistic works, which you self-righteously call good.

Look at the real world man. This was once a great green and blue globe uniquely situated in the solar system so that intelligent life could exist. And all humanity has just succeeded in doing is changing the green to brown, historically because of deforestation and overgrazing, not burning fossil fuels. Lest you forget I have a Nobel Peace Prize also. I got it one hundred and one years before yours and it really was based upon something tangible, a treaty to stop the war between Japan and Russia.

Al: I understand Teddy; you were green before being green was cool. You are the father of Conservationism in America.

Teddy: You are damn right, that is what I am, and this is the real reason I decided to come back for this hunt with you this Christmas. True conservationists believe in natural resource conservation because we are to be stewards of the planet. Some aboriginal people say that humans are to be the guardians of nature. I like that concept.

I took on Jim Hill and the Great Northern Railroad because I thought his attempts at monopolizing all railroads in the United States would destroy the natural free market system of transportation in this country. My work delayed that big is always better mentality in America for almost a century. Now you and your international robber barons are trying to make Jim Hill look like a true saint.

This cap and trade for carbon credits is probably the biggest fascist rip off the people scheme in human history. When I was President, carbon dioxide was looked upon as the basis for all life. While I was sitting around waiting for you to show up, I had time to learn about the EPA finding on greenhouse gases. Seems to me that it looks like a good thing compared to your carbon trading schemes. Fossil fuels are really only fixed carbon that once was what you call a greenhouse gas. It was a gas before it got fixed. That is a true populist-progressive truth.

All that EPA finding does is bureaucratically greatly increase energy prices. And guess what, just a one page bill that is passed by the whole congress can shuffle that section of the Clean Air Act off to the buffalos. What your trading system does is systematically destroy what little capitalist incentives that are left in your world. But also you steal from the rich and then hijack the opportunities for a real rewarding life for the poor, all this to line your own pockets. Furthermore water vapor and solar activity more greatly affect climate than greenhouse gases and you once acknowledged that. Did you ever stop to think that without the Clean Air Act, so-called air pollution would offset the greenhouse gas effects on the earth’s albedo?

Al: Teddy, I think you are being a little self-righteous yourself. All that dirty pollution in the air could bring about another ice age. Also you should see and hear what those right wing knuckle-draggers are saying about you on television and writing about you on the Internet, which I invented. You are sounding like someone that doesn’t believe the temperature of the center of the earth is millions of degrees. Furthermore before you ask, I don’t have to debate anyone on global warming because, I believe it with my whole heart and all those religious bigots, are just trying to lead others away from these fundamental eternal human truths.

Teddy: Well universal progressive bashing that is part of the reason I agreed to come back for this Christmas Hunt, most of you twenty-first century Americans are long on hot air and spin, very short of substance, and void of common sense. I’m sort of short on hype and long on common natural diversity, and the 5 Gs: God, gold, gumption, grub, and guns. This rifle I am drawing out of the scabbard on my horse is a 30-40 Krag, the best hunting rifle in my opinion ever built by the skill of mankind. It shoots a big bullet, damn straight, a long way. I had hoped that we could come to some sort of gentlemanly progressive consensus on this hunting trip. I suggest Mr. Gore, that you get on that gelding that scares the B-Jesus out of you and skedaddle on down the hill. This man-to-man hunting trip is over before it ever got started.

Bah! Humbug! Al, I just realized that you might understand this encounter as a bad dream about a ghost from a Christmas past. The nightmare however, is to not understand that the Christmas season is celebrated because of supernatural human redemption, provided by God for not only you and me, but also all of creation. That is the true light that shines through the darkness of all of humanity’s religions, including the one you are currently promoting. By the way, when you get back to your fancy Tennessee estate, Have a Merry Christmas, Jesus the Christ is the reason for the season. Try to understand a little about the miracle of the Chanukah light, and yes have a less prosperous New Year.