A FUTURE LETTER FROM PAST GENERATIONS EXPLAINING WHY, IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION JUST WASN’T A THING. SORRY.

Howdy-do survivors,

You may be wondering why we past generations didn’t take decisive action to curb climate change and rescue your generation from a hellscape of miserable misery back when there was still time. Fair enough.

We tried our darndest, but doing stuff simply wasn’t an option. Let me be perfectly clear why not. A mustachioed Peruvian hunchback riding an emu in hip waders materialized via osmosis and forbade us to act in the best interest of all living creatures forever. Despite still having our baby molars, we force-fed the oxidized nincompoop expired turpentine. Alas, the dreaded thirteenth sunset of Libra had dawned. The collateral whiplash merely aggravated heaps of malignant begonias. Dirigibles farted.

Understand?

Furthermore, the demand for faux wombat-skin cummerbunds had been so immense during the pesky yearslong heads-randomly-spinning-off-necks flu that handouts of edible licorice sashes and crepe paper codpieces proved insufficient to sustain counterclockwise retrograde inertia. Nor did the televised live-action Godzilla Vs. Engelbert Humperdinck III: Forbidden Hopscotch massage our clandestine tinker toys. I know what you’re thinking: Why not fathom a ramshackle chud bucket in hopes of blackmailing a Byzantine claims adjuster? Good question. Some of our best men drowned in Beano’s horseradish sauce trying. 

Yes, you may be shitting out your gallbladder because you breathed in an ancient disease released from melted Siberian permafrost. However, to fully grasp why we were virtually helpless to act you must look at the situation through our eyes through the 20/20 lens of history through our perspective.

Legislators tried super duper hard to salvage civilization. Cruddy McDuddy slept in a cowhide pantsuit but spent his waking hours engulfed in flames. The Dismembered Astronaut Association recommended he soak in cornhusker brine, and apply for a home equity loan in Paducah, KY. He detonated anyway. Nancy Spudpudder graduated from Biff’s School For The Legally Blindfolded and soon thereafter accepted an entry-level position as a projectile shot toward the Oort Cloud to gradually drift into the godless void of space. Godspeed! Poor Tommy Prinklesmacker suffered from a bout of pituitary disorder after scrubbing his undercarriage with noxious tumbleweed. His noggin got wedged in the Cowabunga Rapids tube slide. Yikes! Even lil’ Valerie Clousewicker won Miss Teeny Chimney Sweep but was devoured by a Kodiak bear during the awards ceremony. Egad! Finally, the one-legged village shih tzu Pogo modeled a Reebok to highlight a new line of canine clodhoppers.

Got it?

Okay. Okay. You’re probably craving tap water thanks to statewide drought and lamenting the total lack of kale due to crop failure. Sucks, I’m sure. But we all have our demons.

The true blame goes to those who aren’t us. Those crudrakers galloped on fidgety Pterodactyls. Turns out Bert Smert was the Bayside Aquarium Strangler after all. All those poor stingrays!!! And for what??? Judy J. Tudy never properly learned how to open an umbrella. And that crafty sonabitch Flunkan Duncan sealed humanity’s doom by achieving orgasm twice last Tuesday.

Yes, the worldwide civil unrest exacerbated by November heatwaves and F5 suburban tornadoes means a stroll around the block is a potential deathtrap. But, trust me, getting “substantive” shit done has never been a walk in the park (back when you could walk in the park), even before all the converging mega-disaster stuff.

Speaking personally for myself personally, I sacrificed where I could. But I was simply too busy existing as the personification of the third chorus of a Limp Bizkit B-side. That’s not a metaphor. I was literally trapped as a lyric in an endless playback loop of Nookie. I absentmindedly recited several verses of the Haberdashers’ Guidebook for the Recently Lobotomized aloud and awakened the… 

Nevermind. Long story.

I know you don’t want excuses. But we got lots of ‘em. Our right leg was trapped under an overturned rickshaw? We succumbed to a stint as board-certified dangling modifiers. We were knee-high to a podiatrist, and we’re being clobbered with the business end of a turkey baster as we write this. However, we slept with our table saw collection. We stacked Minwax cans in Algeria. If you’re ever perpendicular to the lunar agenda of a crestfallen Beluga whale, you may yet grasp our totally legit reasons for inaction. 

Hey, the Sixth Extinction had to occur eventually. Think about it. There’s already been five mass extinctions and you conveniently missed all those. Suffering is not newfangled. All things must pass, or something.

Look on the bright side you guys…only seven fortnights until there’s negative 13 weeks left until it’s not not not not not not not not the anniversary of Bella Lugosi’s vasectomy. Happy Count Dracsectomy Day! 

Anyway, sorry that you’re irreversibly fucked. We truly are. We truly truly truly are sorry. But we wash our hands of the whole thing.

To prove how sorry we are yet how thoroughly we’ve washed our hands, included in this letter is a purple dingleberry. Wedge it under a pallet of Bronze Age peat moss. While germinating lean-tos synergize in their greased seersuckers, a robotic facsimile of Dodger hurler Orel Hershiser will burst from the nearest briar patch, riding a Craftsman rototiller and hurling Ziplock bags of Penzoil and condor guts.

Good luck.