Friends, classmates, countrymen, we have arrived at a momentous crossroads in the histories of both this university and our very planet.
I’ve been reading quite a bit lately about Divest Dal’s 100 Days of Action campaign. This group is encouraging Dalhousie staff, students and alumni to speak up in favour of having the university’s sizable endowment divested from the world’s top 200 fossil fuel companies.
I couldn’t agree more with this objective. Investing in fossil fuel is a grossly irresponsible use of our funds, a distasteful relic of our misguided past. We need to divest immediately. If I make take things a step further, I propose that we should reinvest our entire endowment in solar power. As it so happens, I already have the perfect investment opportunity in mind.
My friends, fossil fuels have failed us. If we truly wish to bring about the collapse of human civilization in a fashion reminiscent of a Roland Emmerich blockbuster, we need to band together now and insist that Dalhousie University reinvest its $470 million endowment into my common sense plan to create a gigantic orbital death ray.
Perhaps a little explaining is in order.
I’ll admit, back in 2006, I was as enthralled as the rest of you with the concept of fossil fuel assisted climate change. Watching Hollywood masterpieces such as An Inconvenient Truth and The Day After Tomorrow filled me with a thrill that I dare say bordered on the erotic.
Like many of my peers, I grew up idolizing such pioneering children’s role models as the incorruptibly principled Hoggish Greedily from Captain Planet and the enchantingly brilliant, impeccably fashionable Carmen Sandiego.
Thus, it was only natural that my heart skipped a beat at the promise that I could contribute to something as devilishly grand as an Ice-pocalypse in New York City.
Year after year, I did everything I could to play my part in the promised horrors. I left my industrial strength floodlights on at all hours, refused to eat anything except food imported from the remotest regions of the Australian Outback, and revved up my military-grade SUV for even the most trivial excursions to the drug store across the street.
As time passed, however, I started to notice a disturbing trend: the earth’s temperature wasn’t rising. Insufferable climate change skeptics laughed in my face, dismissing my fondest dreams as the stuff of fantasy. Climate scientists insisted that the catastrophic change was still looming – that we were continuing on a path to utter ruin, even if some of the short-term data misleadingly indicated otherwise. They compared us to frogs slowly boiling in a pot, unaware of our predicament until it was too late to act.
Such words were cold comfort. Frogs slowly boiling in a pot? Where was the drama? Where was the visual flare?
I have no shame admitting my youthful credulity, but the time for childish fantasies has ended. If we wish to see this world ravaged by cinematically pleasing super-disasters, the time to act is now. I need Dalhousie to entrust me with its $470 million endowment.
I can’t promise I’ll destroy the entire planet. The Earth is pretty big, after all. To Alderaan the whole thing would take a pile of anti-matter the size of Mount Everest, and at a NASA-estimated $100 billion per milligram, that is going to be a little beyond our budget.
What I’m proposing is a far more practical project based on the real-world plans developed by a secret Nazi research team back during the closing days of WWII.
First reported on publically in a 1945 issue of Life magazine, these plans envisioned the construction of an enormous space-based mirror. To facilitate the operation and maintenance of this mirror, the scientists planned to attach a habitable command center that would recycle its breathing air by means of an extensive pumpkin garden.
I assure you, this project is every bit as miraculous as it sounds.
The mirror would act much in the same way as the magnifying glasses that young boys use to torment ants, focusing tremendous concentrations of reflected solar energy onto a narrow region of the Earth. According to Life, the Nazis intended to use this power to scorch enemy cities and boil parts of the ocean.
Though this plan is a touch unconventional, I don’t foresee much opposition from those who already support the Divest Dal campaign. The station operates entirely on solar energy and makes use of hydroponic gardening to supply the oxygen. Surely even the most unwashed, bearded of hippies should be able to find it in their hearts to throw their support behind this floating palace of pandemonium.
For those naysaying commerce types out there who are reluctant to see us divest our endowment from profitable fossil fuel companies, let me just emphasize that there’s no reason we can’t have both glorious destruction AND fantastic profits.
For example, let’s say we demonstrate our awesome power and terrible resolve by zapping the Statue of Liberty into a red-hot tsunami of molten copper. Theatrically badass? Check. Metaphorically poignant? Check. And yet, the other, less interesting parts of New York City that we haven’t destroyed still generate a gross metropolitan product of $1.55 trillion. One would suspect that the city would be willing to pay handsomely to convince us to move on to lighting up the London Eye.
Ransom money aside, can we really put a price on doing the right thing? Can we live with tedious consequences if we fail to take action? Would any potential lost income even matter in the coming nightmarish hellscape brought about by the slow burn of climate change and the endless ravages of our untouchable hammer of the gods?
Look into your hearts. Search your souls. Know that I’ll totally take this idea to SMU next if you turn me down.
I trust that you will make the right decision.
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