EARTH´S WORST PARASITES: HUMANS - THE ECOLOGICAL RUCKSACK OF CELESTIA´S NEWEST KITCHEN TOY

Source: 123RF.

By Gundhramns Hammer & Salvatore Scimino

December 19, 2015

All hell broke loose. It looked as if Celestia had just been beamed down to Earth after a terrible fight with the Klingons out of the dark sky. She was not celestial at all at home anymore.

Lately she had not been sleeping well. She was having terrible nightmares. She used to wake up in the middle of the night, screaming like crazy, as if yelling at strange Creepshow or alien monsters.

To make things worse, her husband was beginning to worry about his iron horse, frequently complaining about his reproductive resources, telling his friends at work that Celestia was too edgy to ask her some sweet candy from her factory. Nothing was like a week ago.

Her kids avoided her at all costs.

Even the family dog stayed away from her, not because of her smell, for as far as dogs are concerned humans always stink of poop, but because she bitched too much for nothing.

At work, she used to get sleepy. But she was not so sleepy to let her boss, a rascal and charming devil named Trundro, drill his alligator tail on her pastry. 

Outside home, not following the promiscuous times full of sexually transmitted diseases, she was always on guard for any strange knights trying to get passed the walls of her castle, a place reserved only for her beloved husband.

It happened that Celestia was very attractive at her 40´s, so much so that Trundro had been hoping to beam her up to the back of the Moon.

This man had seen Bella and the Beast movie too many times that he already thought he was a king, always dreaming of a good time whenever he got the time to put the needle of his clock on time.

Not a chance for this philanderous man. Celestia´s candy was just for her man. Her not-of-this-time faithfulness was exactly what kept her husband on her side like a lap dog.

But… what the heck was wrong with Celestia, anyway?

Ever since her neighbour Tangie came over and told her that her refrigerator was too old and dilapidated, not as classy as hers, Celestia´s head had been spinning like an antique Victrola phonograph´s scratched record, going around and around over the same damn screechy tune.

What was her problem?

She was thinking incessantly of getting a new refrigerator!!!

What put more wood to her fire was that she could not find the right timing to ask her husband, a man named Putrefacto, that she wanted a new toy in her kitchen for Christmas.

Putrefacto was too damn stingy and she was afraid he would rot instantly, thus giving credit to his weird name, right on the spot upon hearing about her wishful thinking.

Until one day, when she saw the opportunity. She spotted their pooch wagging his tail in the kitchen early that day. It was a good sign for her to go ahead. Her husband was quite happy that particular morning, smelling good after having shaved off, trying to sound like Pavarotti to no avail.

• Honey, she asked, what´s the matter with you this morning?

• Babe, I forgot to tell you last night that I have gotten a raise, he answered, wrapping his words in a mellifluous song.

• Wonderful!, she remarked.

• Honey…. I´ve been thinking that we need a new refrigerator, she spread it out. At last.

• But…Babe, what´s wrong with the one we´ve got, Putrefacto growled, scaring the shit out of their pet which was munching on his favourite morning biscuit.

• Oh… It.. It´s just it doesn´t make ice as it used to do. Besides, sometimes it acts up, she smoothly said like a purring kitten.

Of course, there was nothing wrong with their damn machine which was only two years old.

She did not dare tell her husband that Tangie had annoyed her immensely with her snooty remark about her fridge. She had it going around on her mind as if those words had been nailed on her brain. 

And Celestia was not about to let her friend get away with this. Not this time, at least.

In this world, very few people are happy with what they have. They always see the grass greener on the other side of the fence. They have been taught to do so since early age.

Consuming Earth´s natural resources like there was no tomorrow is the in thing to do.

Anyway, did Celestia get her new toy?

She did!

All she had to do was to pass swiftly her hand on her maniac husband´s wiener sausage and whisper to his ear: Honey, get your Navarone gun ready for tonight!!... And he quickly gave in to her shopping wishes.

He even forgot about changing his damn name! Also, the idea of getting a brand new car to impress his buddies went out if his mind for a few seconds. 

Putrefacto was just as maniac as her on getting new things.

Celestia and Putrefacto got the damn new fridge on the weekend a couple of days before Christmas and things went back to normal like magic.

Even Lucky, their pet, noticed the difference, especially at night. No more screams coming from hell bothering his delicate ears at night.

Of course, Putrefacto´s butt explosions fueled by the carotid-clogging and colon-demolishing cheeseburgers went on as usual, bringing some pleasure into Lucky´s boring life, giving him something joyful to sniff at, to remind him of bygone days before domestication.

The ecological rucksack of Celestia´s new kitchen toy

Being so careless about the environment, the above family, although it is a fiction which approaches reality, shows the state of things today. Worldwide.

Most people on this planet do not give a damn about Mother Nature. That is one of our biggest problems.

Generally speaking, people just look at their toes, noses or asses. And worry to death about fucking or getting fucked too.

But we humans are parasitising on Earth like hell.

Mon Capitaine, we humans (Homo insapiens) are, so far, Mother Earth´s worst parasites, some more than others but parasites nevertheless.

Oui, mon ami.

Let us say that Celestia´s new refrigerator weighs 200 kg.

This would mean that the “ecological rucksack” or ecological backpack (Fig. 1) of this family´s newest contraption - the refrigerator - would be roughly 1,714 kg of resources. 

Figure 1. The ecologic rucksack of a gold wedding ring. Source: Akita Eco-Town Center. 

But depending on the materials used to construct Celestia´s fridge, its ecological rucksack could much, much more. For our purposes we will leave it at that. If you are a smart aleck out there, be our guest.

According to a recent report by The Friends of the Earth (2000), “the ecological rucksack comprises all resources used to produce the product, to transport it between factories and from factory to the consumer. The rucksack of a product also includes the material and energy used by the shop selling it (its construction, maintenance, heating and cooling, etc.), the energy and materials needed to use the product (electricity or fuel, for example) and finally everything that is required for safe dismantling and/or disposal.”

Let us now extrapolate a little bit more on this fridge issue.

Imagine that the blood-sucking global elite found a way to do away with poverty worldwide and would make each one of the 7 billion humans on this planet buy a refrigerator like Celestia´s 200 kg machine for an entire year, then you would get an ecological rucksack of 11,998X10⁹ kg of resources.

In other words, the ecological rucksack of the all of the acquired 200 kg fridges by the 7 billion people would be approximately 12 billion tonnes of resources in a single year.

This would be 20% from all the 60 billion tonnes a year of global resource consumption now caused by all products used by humans, according to Friends of the Earth (2000).

That´s a hell of a lot of natural resources for just one item, mon ami.

Now, mon ami, tell me… Could Earth sustain this kind of human parasitising?

Nope!... We´re are fucked!

References

Friends of the Earth (2000). Overconsumption? Our use of the world´s natural resources. Friends of the Earth Austria, Heidenreichstein, Austria. 36 p.

Schmidt-Bleek F. (1994). Factor 10: Ecological Rucksacks asn MIPS. Translated from the original Wieviel Umweldt braucht der Mench, - MIPS, das Maß für ökologisches Wirtschaften by Reuben Deumling. Draft Version 9, March 2011. Berkeley, Ca, usa. 165 p.

Disclaimer:

This post is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. Any likeness to actual persons, situations or places in the world, either real or imaginary, is strictly coincidental.