This is the end. But I’m even afraid that, after all, I am not biodegradable enough for my demise to not contaminate. I write this famished, avid, feral, hairy, and naked. I write from the top of a coconut tree, wearing no more than a loincloth. I chew roots. I paint my body the pale color of the trunk so as not to violate the native fauna of the jungle with my exotic tan. I have tried everything. I have obeyed every rule. And I still live in fear of running into some journalist who will discover that I am also doing this wrong and will publicly denounce me for my contribution to the annihilation of the planet. I don’t have climate anxiety. I have anxiety about the climate anxiety of others.

It all started the day I stopped ironing. I did it when I learned that I could save the planet from imminent collapse. I was 15 years old and thought it was a wonderful idea not to have to iron. I was sure the seals and wildebeest would thank me one day. That same week I tried to stop making the bed, but the slap I got from my mother was recorded in every seismographic institute around the world. The energy release from that slap may well have shortened the life of the planet by some 600 million years. That made me sad.

Later I quit smoking to avoid further pollution and switched to electronic cigarettes, shortly before they began to burn and explode simultaneously on different news broadcasts around the world, massacring unwary ex-smokers and unleashing panic. Frightened, I threw them out the window, then surrendered myself to the world of vaping as if I were a damned locomotive of the 19th century, until a neighbor warned me that more people were already dying from my scented vapor than from all the wars in the world combined.

I then made the decision to abandon automobile transportation, at least inside the house. I sold my huge gasoline car and traded it in for a very eco-friendly diesel. I had not yet finished paying for it when I was accused of killing the Amazon and polluting the tribes of Kilimanjaro, and so I bought an electric car that, I admit, works well, but I forget to charge it, it leaves me stranded, and I have to call my cousin the truck driver, who with his 18-wheeler and trailer full of cattle may not tickle the Amazon either. But what can you expect from a guy who hauls cows for the sheer pleasure of helping to waste 7,000 liters of water per steak?

Around that time I gave up my acts of environmental terrorism, such as throwing used oil through the noisy neighbor’s keyhole, mixing food with leftover computer wiring in the bucket to throw off thieves, or drinking coffee from a plastic cup instead of making a bowl with my hands as good people do. I quit my job in a highly polluting industry (politics), suspended my plane trips, and started flying by bicycle; it’s tiring, but the kids love it. I gave up meat, fish, and vegetables and developed an original technique of eating by photosynthesis, laying in the sun six hours a day, ass up.

I participated in journalistic witch hunts against those hyena offspring who still flush the toilet after peeing —there’s still a lot to do — and I became the first anti-drug activist, thus discovering an incredibly effective method of birth control. I bought all the magazines, watched all the documentaries, and promptly attended religious services with Mother Earth, often preached by New York Times journalists, to atone for my guilt every Friday at NBC’s climate confessional.

I’ve tried everything. I eat plastic every day, three to six times, and I never throw vegetables or greens into the sea. But I never forget to drink 8 to 10 liters of wine a day and, at meals, in moderation, a small glass of water. I have eliminated toilet paper, I have been writing on stone for centuries, and I always walk around the house in the dark; I have discovered that eating the corner of the living room table is part of the ecological diet.

One day I stumbled upon a Vegan YouTube Sanctuary. I became an animalist as soon as I learned from this channel that “roosters rape chickens.” I was not surprised. It was to be expected. I conscientiously follow this farm’s videos. My fingertips are flayed from giving them likes on social networks, and I will not continue to do so because I have since learned that this leaves an ecological footprint greater than the global consumption of marijuana for 10 years. The last thing I found out is that at the Vegan Sanctuary, girls feed the chickens their own ovaries. That’s when I jumped on the coconut tree, fearing that the activists might be planning to step outside the farm and become my nutritionists as well.

Translated by Joel Dalmau.