JULY 21, 2022 – [Biden stands behind a lectern bearing the presidential seal; a forest fire blazes in the background]
“Okay folks, here’s the deal. I don’t care if you call me old or call me slow. I don’t care if you call me Biden or call me Brandon. Like my dad used to tell me when I was growing up in Scranton, ‘Joey, sticks and stones can break your bones, but words will never hurt you.’ And by the way, my best buddy from my boyhood days in Scranton—now a retired doctor and a Republican—says I definitely don’t have dementia. Sometimes, though, I wonder about him . . . That was a joke, folks.
“What’s no joke is this: we’re in deep, bacon fat—way beyond guns, $5/gallon gasoline, Roe v. Wade, January 6, and abysmally bad Nats baseball. We’re talkin‘ Kentucky-fried farms, cities, and suburbs—not only in Kentucky but from Maine to Malibu; from Miami to Mercer Island—not to mention in Rome, London, and Paris. We’re talkin‘ extreme consequences of extreme weather triggered by climate change caused by greenhouse gases. I’m callin‘ it a national emergency within a global crisis.
“As you’ve probably heard, over last weekend alone, enough ice melted in Greenland to cover the entire state of West Virginia with water a foot deep. (I’d like to remind folks that Senator Joe Manchin is from West Virginia.)
“If we don’t do something to get our planet out of the frying pan, nothing else matters. Regardless of all the pressing issues that rightfully grab and grip your attention and mine—high rent, high gas, high crime—nothing takes higher priority than slowing climate change. I say ‘slowing,’ because guess what: we’ve been fiddlin‘ while Rome burns, and now the chickens—fried chickens—have come home to roost.
“It’s time to squawk; time to make a scene, a splash . . . and until we have a fix, it’s time to drive less, walk more; fly less, Zoom more.
“To find that fix is gonna take a three-point program to save the planet, and here are the points:
NUMBER ONE: Together, we’re gonna launch a ‘take-it-to-the-moon’ effort to develop cheap, safe, renewable energy in full replacement of fossil fuels around the world. Taking inspiration from President Kennedy in 1961 and the mission to land astronauts on the moon and bring ’em back safely, we’re gonna harness and deploy this new source of energy full scale ‘before this decade is out.’ To Putin, MSB, Koch, and Khamenei, I say, ‘Eat cake.’ (Sorry, Norway; not sorry, Texas—‘Oops!’ – as ‘Dubya’ would say.)
NUMBER TWO: Repeat Number One.
NUMBER THREE: Repeat Number Two.
“If you’re anxious about the cost, you shouldn’t be. You should worry instead about the unthinkable cost of not taking this action.
“Now isn’t the time to say we can’t. It’s time to do what we must; time to put the ‘can’ back in Ameri-CAN!
“Thank you, and God ble . . . I mean, God forgive us for what we’ve done to creation and God help us set things straight.”
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
