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Home / Environment

Raybon Kan: Trump doing his bit for climate change

Raybon Kan
By Raybon Kan
Raybon Kan is an award-winning stand-up comedian·NZ Herald·
29 Mar, 2017 04:00 PM4 mins to read

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He's said climate change was a hoax created by the Chinese, but have you seen the air in Beijing? They certainly walk the talk. Photo / 123RF
He's said climate change was a hoax created by the Chinese, but have you seen the air in Beijing? They certainly walk the talk. Photo / 123RF

He's said climate change was a hoax created by the Chinese, but have you seen the air in Beijing? They certainly walk the talk. Photo / 123RF

Raybon Kan
Opinion by Raybon Kan
Raybon Kan is an award-winning stand-up comedian
Learn more

It was such a pretty planet there for a while.

Then the sparkling white of the ice caps moved house. Places like the Great Barrier Reef, once an underwater rainbow, now possess a whiteness comparable to the Republican Party.

Australia might as well rename it the White Reefs of Dover - or "Jane Austen's Oppressed Sickly Bedridden Barrier Reef".

We can't blame Trump for this. He's only been there since January 20. But he's certainly doing what he can to get credit for the knock-out blow.

Does anyone still think Trump is anything less than an extinction level event?
He is to humans (and unfortunate polar bears, and cities by the sea) what that asteroid was to dinosaurs.

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This week he's eliminated regulations to reduce pollution.

Because, you know, the right to pollute is like a factory's First Amendment right to free expression, as well as its Second Amendment right to use a weapon. That's two amendments for the price of one. What a dealmaker!

Can you get any more American than that? In fact, you can toss in freedom of religion as well, because it's only faith, not evidence, that can deny climate change. Not believing in climate change is surely like not believing in evolution, or vaccines, but a lot of Americans do that too.

When signing his law in support of dirty air, surrounded by a wall of burly coalminers - who'd otherwise have to become strippers to make ends meet - Trump said something about clean coal.

I don't know if there's any point throwing Trump's words back in his own face. (Why pay more attention to his words than he does?) But if coal is so clean, how come it's affected by pollution regulations?

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He's said climate change was a hoax created by the Chinese, but have you seen the air in Beijing? They certainly walk the talk. Beijing is a pollution theme park. Breathing is Beijing is like trying to vape whole sheets of Gib board, without even sanding them first into powder.

From Trump's pro-pollution law change, someone's going to get uber-rich in the uber short term. It'll be someone building something, without their hands tied by liberal overheads like transgender toilets, health and safety for workers, or regulations against poisoning the environment.

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But was the demise of coal really about coastal elite Hollywood snowflakes, or was it about the collapse of the coal price?

I suppose if there's enough coal smoke in the atmosphere, solar won't make it through, so that would kneecap one of coal's competitors. It can't be long till he suggests building a roof, to eliminate all that socialist solar energy that even the poor and uninsured somehow get access to. ("We're gonna build a roof! And Tesla will pay for it!")

Trump isn't going to make coal profitable without somehow raising demand for coal. But how?

That's where the US military come in. With their increased budget, they can convert their fleet of aircraft carriers to coal. They could commission the USS Donald J Trump, fuelled by enormous coal stacks - golden of course - spewing bile.

Its F-16 fighter jets will spring off the deck from a coal-fired catapult, and each F-16 wing will sport its own chimney, proudly combusting West Virginia's finest. God bless the Electoral College.

Besides, who says the atmosphere has anything to do with temperature? Does it mention that in the Bible? And how do we know temperature is going up? How do we know these aren't atheist thermometers? Maybe all those thermometers were hired by Obama.

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It won't be long before there's a flag-waving, monster-truck honking rally where all thermometers get tossed into a bonfire (coal-fired) for being un-American. Let's see them measure that temperature. Not working so good now, huh? ("Hey - mercury! What's that taste like?")

In more of this hater-loser science conspiracy, research emerges that because NZ held on to leaded petrol for longer than the rest of the world, Kiwi kids during the 70s and 80s had their IQs stunted. That's right: leaded petrol made us dumber.

(NZ got rid of lead in the 90s, but it's taken till now to find this out, presumably because this generation of scientists were breathing the same lead.)

As part of that generation, I'm feeling ripped off. On the other hand, maybe we can afford to be dumber, because now we have Google.

I expect it won't be long till Trump brings back lead in American petrol. He'll soon need all the voters he can get.

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