I was watching another TV show about the dangers of climate change. Now, they’re saying we have “only twelve years left.” This is our “World War Two Struggle.” But I’m confused. If the climate is changing, what is it changing from? And what should the right climate be?
I don’t know how to answer these questions, so I decided to talk to an expert. You might have heard of him — I went to see Og, the 40,000-year-old man that those explorers found in the remote mountains of Turkistan — the one who they brought back to civilization, and who now has an office at M.I.T.
My plan was to interview him for Lew Rockwell. I’d get the definitive story about climate change, once and for all. Of anybody, I thought, a man like Og who has seen everything, would have real insight.
I found him in his office, behind his desk. He motioned for me to sit, and I did. His tall red leather chair loomed over his small olive frame like the wings of some giant bird.
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I asked him, “Mr. Og, with your 40,000 years of life and experience, can you tell us how to stop climate change?”
He barely glanced up from his papers to regard me indifferently.
But I was determined to get his insight. So I clarified, “Mr. Og, if we don’t stop climate change soon, we’ll get devastating hurricanes and rising sea levels, and the Runaway Greenhouse Effect.”
He signed impatiently, put down his pen, and said, “You seem like a nice concerned boy, but a little impressionable. This climate change – it’s the oldest trick in the world. The Witch Doctors did it all the time when I was young.”
I didn’t have a clue what he talking about.
He explained, “Back then, the Witch Doctor – he’d throw some finger bones and say the Storm Gods are angry. So, if the people don’t pay money to the Chosen One – the Gods, they would wipe out the village.”
“Who was the Chosen One?” I asked.
“The Village Chief,” he said, then paused for my reaction. “You see, it was a swindle,” he added.
“But, the scientific studies,” I protested, “the emission factors and long wave radiation, and…”
He raised a hand to stop me. “I know,” he said. “They give me this here at the University. Emission rates and complex adaptive systems factors, and all the rest. It’s gibberish. The medicine man had talk like that. The only difference was back then he had a bone in his nose.”
I couldn’t believe he’d said that. “But Mr. Og, “I objected, “are you claiming that tens of thousands of top scientists are no better than witch doctors?”
“Look,” he said. “Do you really think there are tens of thousands of top scientists in the world? That’s like saying there’s a million Beethovens. Realscientists are true individuals – and those are rare. The hordes you’re talking about are either trying to get ahead in the bureaucracy, or they’re just scroungers going along with the crowd.”
He claimed all those so-called scientists were just after government money, and they couldn’t give a damn about the weather.
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“That’s a pretty bold assertion, Mr. Og.”
He said, “The sky is a mysterious thing that people don’t understand. So, your leaders use it to scare people – for a thousand centuries, whenever they want people to comply and pay taxes, they use fear. The Storm God routine is the oldest racket there is.”
Og leaned forward in that looming chair, wagged a boney finger at me, and his voice took on an ominous tone.
“So, listen to me,” he said. “Don’t worry about the sky and the rain. Your real worry is about the con. When leaders get enough power to pull the Storm God trick on a billion people all at once, they have too much power. That’s what you need to worry about.”
I left Mr. Og’s office thinking, well … that interview didn’t go the way I thought it would.
Og, the 40,000-year-old man did make me think – but he couldn’t possible be right. I mean, if he was right, then that would mean the politicians we all vote for don’t have our best interests at heart.
