Myth: There is nothing you can personally do to stop climate change.
Fact: There is something you can personally do, but you didn’t do it.
Myth: Our children will wander tornado-swept wastes strewn with the shards of a great civilization.
Fact: Typhoon-swept wastes will be more common.
Myth: Earth’s climate has changed naturally in the past, so modern climate change must also be a natural process.
Fact: Modern climate change is caused by human activity. For evidence, look at all that footage of smokestacks spewing methane, which then cuts to a time-lapse of a big traffic jam and over to a lush tree in a field rapidly desiccating as a lonesome elk walks by, and then a polar bear tumbles off a melting ice floe and is surrounded by plastic piranhas from a kids’ game that ended up in a landfill, and the child who owned it is sitting bereft in a sandbox, and the angle widens to show that the sand is actually a desert where an old-growth forest once stood, and we zoom in on a determined ant struggling across sun-baked rocks, and what’s he carrying? A scrap of paper that says “Al Gore.”
Myth: It’s a beautiful day today.
Fact: We’re all gonna die.
Myth: Between heat waves, hurricanes, fires, and floods, every summer will be a deadly reminder of our failed stewardship and darkening future.
Fact: Maybe so, but you can still relax and groove to the Song of the Summer, “(muffled screams).”
Myth: The younger generation will prioritize taking the action necessary to avert climate catastrophe.
Fact: The younger generation’s only priority is getting a bottle of Strawberry Watermelon Prime.
Myth: Wildfire smoke contains natural compounds found in evergreen roots which, when inhaled, can improve the body’s oxygen absorption.
Fact: What? Where did you hear that?
Myth: Online. Maybe Instagram Reels?
Fact: There’s no way that’s true.
Myth: Yeah, it didn’t sound right. Let me see if I can find it again. Hmm . . . no. But look—awww, it’s the Macaw Dad who has six parrot babies that snuggle in his bed.
Fact: I love that guy. But can parrots really be comfortable sleeping like that?
Myth: Sure. Look how cuddly they are.
Myth: As the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, temperatures rise at an even rate across the planet.
Fact: Temperatures rise at different rates in different places. Land has warmed at about twice the rate of the ocean surface, Arctic temperatures are climbing faster than those in equatorial regions, and Ryan Gosling has never been hotter.
Myth: What about carbon capture?
Fact: You mean carbonara. It’s delicious.
Myth: Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter, was gathering flowers when Hades burst from the underworld in his black chariot and abducted her. Demeter, distraught, forbade the trees to bear fruit. Zeus commanded Hades to release Persephone, and he obeyed, but only after tricking her into eating pomegranate seeds, which condemned her to spending half of every year in the underworld. It is Persephone’s annual return, and not anthropogenic CO2 emissions, that causes global warming.
Fact: Global warming is caused by the lewd, un-Christian practices of witches and conjurers.
Myth: Humanity’s tragic flaw is that it cannot overcome its narrow provincialism to act collectively and save itself.
Fact: Humanity’s only flaw is the weird pinkie toe with the stubby nail.
Myth: Climate change will lead to human extinction.
Fact: A.I. will get us first.
Myth: After decades of resistance, it will soon be simple to transition to an all-electric transportation system.
Fact: No, because each clean-energy breakthrough will be produced by a crypto-fascist billionaire. If you want an emissionless fusion engine, you’ll have to buy it from a company owned by a land-mine heir named Gheaf Trince, who purchased the Houston Texans so he could “re-masculate the N.F.L.”
Myth: The energy it took to publish this article could have been used to plant a thousand trees.
Fact: C’mon, be cool.
Myth: There is no technological solution that can be implemented in time to reverse the effects of climate change.
Fact: We don’t know if this is true, but it can’t hurt to fly a bunch of jets to Gstaad to discuss it over Negronis. ♦
