I confess I’ve sinned against the climate and against Mother Jones. And I’ll do it again. The famous magazine of tantric sex and other intellectual pipe dreams enlightens us with a bombshell report that changes everything: Dudes Emit More Greenhouse Gases Than Women Do. It’s the Cars — and the Meat. Apparently, a preliminary French study has finally found a way to make the data lead to the conclusion they’d already decided on: men pollute 26 percent more than women. I’m guessing that doesn’t include the chemicals in nail polish, microplastics in exfoliants, hair spray aerosols, or the massive clothing hauls.
I’ll throw a birthday party for my old Golf GTI, serve a whole roasted, chopped-up cow, and when we’re drunk enough, we’ll fly from Madrid to Las Vegas.
The pollution, they say, comes from transportation and food. We drive a lot, fly a lot, take a lot of trains, and on weekends, we love to rev up the Harley-Davidson through pristine natural landscapes teeming with endangered species. In fact, here’s a secret nobody knows: whenever we can, men drive up a mountain, find a crystal-clear river surrounded by as many trees, plants, and animals as possible, and dump the used motor oil from our cars right there, just for the sheer joy of screwing over the planet. No girl would ever do that.
The study points out we eat a lot of meat. And I’ve noticed that Mother Jones, in its quest to always be the most progressive kid in class, accidentally stumbled into a sexist trope. Why the hell assume guys eat tons of meat while women munch on veggies? Isn’t that a terrifyingly patriarchal, offensive, oppressive, and probably homophobic conclusion? Are they suggesting women, being weaker, don’t need red meat protein and are fine nibbling on celery? Well, these folks clearly haven’t seen my friends eat. My friend Lucia weighs half as much as I do, and the last time we went out to dinner, after she demolished her steak and mine as well, she tried to take a bite out of my elbow. Put Lucia in your stats if you dare, French sociologist!
Since the report was, after all, too apolitical for Mother Jones, they pulled an unexpected plot twist and found a way to blame J.D. Vance for everything. They claim his “soy boy” jab at weak progressive masculinity is why guys like me — basically the reincarnation of Burke and Hayek combined — now want to chow down on burgers as thick as a deluxe edition of Don Quixote.
Let’s also admit these people can’t make up their minds. For years, they’ve been convincing us that men and women don’t exist, that they’re social constructs, and that gender isn’t determined by biology or any other fascist branch of science. But now they’re doing studies to say men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and there’s no gender fluidity when it comes to whether you’re craving salad, meat, or fish.
And that’s just focusing on food. The day they start looking into drinks, they’ll lock us up as soon as they realize the primary food group for men is beer. Your average man can down about 10 liters on a chill day, and making that requires roughly 70 liters of water — not counting the over 2,000 liters needed for the agricultural production of the ingredients. Men are straight-up draining the damn planet!
Finally, the magazine offers advice for people like me who want to crank up our masculinity even more, especially since we’ve ruled out Tucker Carlson’s ball-tanning technique for boosting testosterone: “The most powerful actions a person can take to cut their carbon pollution include getting rid of a gas-powered car, eating less meat, and avoiding flights.”
Thanks, guys. I’ll throw a birthday party for my old Golf GTI, serve a whole roasted, chopped-up cow, and when we’re drunk enough, we’ll fly from Madrid to Las Vegas, with a dinner stop in Dubai, skywriting middle fingers the whole way. Because I don’t want a tiny carbon footprint, a little soy-carbon-footprint. I want a carbon footprint so big it’s like an Airbus A380 — a footprint that makes women nudge each other, wide-eyed, with frozen smiles, whispering, “Oh my God, girl! Have you seen that massive carbon footprint? I hope it comes to pollute me tonight!”
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