A Harmonious Step Into the Future

It was the most environmentally impactful work that he could do. Life expectancy in the US averaged 77.6 years, from which Cliff guesstimated there were roughly 48 years of his life left. He ate healthy and exercised regularly, but he could never be certain that he wouldn’t fall victim to an accident, terrorist attack or the sickness of the year. Still, he stuck with the standard accepted measure of life. And with the average American ringing in a whopping 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year, the Earth would be free of approximately 960 tonnes.

Shopping for locally made clothing and foodstuffs didn’t have a large enough effect, nor did his refusal to eat beef (which emitted 80 pounds carbon dioxide per 2.2 pounds of meat). He wanted to keep his contribution as significant as possible. Even if there was the possibility of further reducing his carbon footprint, no amount of conservation would make it absolutely zero. There would always be the energy required to manufacture his bike, for his Prius, for his small, wind-ventilated apartment on Temple Street. There would always be something. And no matter how hard he campaigned for new pollution standards, no dent was ever made.

There seemed to have been a light at the end of the tunnel in late 2008. Obama campaigned with the promise to curtail pollution and then, miraculously to Cliff (you can understand his doubts due to the 8 years prior), the public elected Obama. An anxiety for change consumed and delighted Cliff but he lost hope when too much time was spent on stimulus packages and attempts to reform health care. The rhetoric revolved around the economy, but Cliff believed the economy to be too myopic of a goal. The average American, meanwhile, used 20 tonnes of CO2, 5 times as much as the world average and ten times as much as the world goal. Did we even want to provide health care for people who had no idea what kind of damage they were inflicting upon the planet?

No, thought Cliff, as he kicked the drum from under his feet and let the hemp rope snag. If there was no change forthcoming, this one absolute sacrifice was the only thing left. He instinctively grabbed for the rope as it cinched. He hoped the fall would break his neck but he needed a longer drop than 18 inches from his organic bamboo bongo drum. His windpipe choked, he felt his face fill up with blood rushing back into his lungs to take air. He mistook the creaking of the hemp rope for his own breath. As the rope constricted his blood flow and breathing, his eyes blurred and he stared at the fuzzy purple outline of his nose. It was uncomfortable and awkward.

Snap.

Cliff believed he felt the weightlessness of drifting into a pollution-free heaven. But he was just falling. His angular body flopped to the floor, his unfurling legs kicked at the drum and it bellowed and crashed against the naturally stained, reclaimed wood coffee table. He coughed and sputtered as his body reversed the effects of his self-destruction. Cliff brushed his shaggy brown hair out of his face and cursed, disheartened by his wimpy attempt to help out Mother Earth.

And then Cliff heard another crash. The all too identifiable noise of a car accident: the squealing of rubber, the acute sound of metal grinding. Distracted from his own death-wish, he checked to see what was going on, nervous that the crash included his pride and joy, a Blue Ribbon Metallic Prius. Despite the fact that the vehicle polluted, he loved it more than any other of his possessions. Driving the average car in the US burned off 6 tonnes of carbon dioxide yearly, and yet the Prius discharged half that. It represented a harmonious step to the future, where people used technology for the conservation of the environment and not its destruction. Besides he never used his beautiful car unless it was completely necessary, like bringing home groceries (in his own cloth bags) or traveling more than 5 miles to a place without a bus stop. He kept it immaculately clean (with waterless car wash) and loved the communal feel that owning a Prius entailed. When he saw other Prius drivers on the streets he might wave, and even if they didn’t there was still the sense that they were on the same team. 

Cliff raced to the balcony, the setting sun blinding him momentarily. His heart sank when he saw the large length-wise abrasion on his car. The side view mirror hung pathetically by the electrical wiring like a poisoned and wilting leaf. He wanted to cry.

 He scanned for the perpetrator. South on Temple Street, on the opposite side of the road, a tank-topped cyclist on a beach cruiser weaved through the light at Broadway in the distance and old green sedan, farther ahead, cruised through the intersection. But to the north, a ketchup-colored Hummer H3 turned right onto Mariquita Street. As it sped around the corner, he saw the side smeared with the Blue Ribbon Metallic paint from his Prius. Combined with the blazing white glare reflecting off the window, the Hummer had a patriotic feel. He half expected to see an old “W” bumper sticker (and possibly a “These Colors Don’t Run”) on the back of the car. No stickers, but the “MYHUMMR” vanity license plate stood out from the back door. As if there weren’t enough declarative branding and logo placement already.

Blood pooled in Cliff’s face. Not only did this idiot act out of complete selfishness, but he had to be stupid enough to not realize that the new Hummers were a complete falsehood, no longer the ultimate statement of manliness. The new Hummers shared the same chassis as the Suburbans, those clunky, oversized soccer mom mobiles and had almost zero capability of doing any off-roading unlike the original military Hummer. The new Hummers actually had limited capabilities. Parking anywhere in Long Beach was nearly impossible. Drivers of the H3 always had to be on the lookout for double spaces with plenty of clearance on the street; narrow streets had to be carefully traversed. Temple Street was as incapacious as any street in Long Beach.

Cliff pulled the noose off and stormed out of his second story apartment and down the stairs, his neck colored the incipient black and blue of the rope’s bruising. But by the time he had run up Temple to the corner of Mariquita Street, the Hummer had turned the next corner, as if the H3 Driver knew what he had done and was trying to avoid being caught. But the license plate was stamped into Cliff’s memory. He would never forget something as unoriginal and arrogant as the “MYHUMMR” vanity plate.

While walking back he examined his car. It was pretty bad, probably thousands of dollars in damage, plus all the pollution emitted for the mechanics to fix it. But the sting of the damaged car was overshadowed by the unprincipled nature of the accident.  The H3 Driver wouldn’t care that Cliff, an innocent, would have to deal with all the repercussions. The H3 Driver obviously thought himself an exception, as if he could elect to obey the law or not like the commandments of a foreign religion. The goddamn H3 was an explicit statement that “I’ll do what I want, I don’t care how much I pollute.” There was no way that driving that behemoth of a car for a year equaled the normal 6 tonnes of CO2 per year average that came with driving a standard car. It had to be, at minimum, double. Which meant that this H3 Driver was going to be well in excess of the annual 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted per capita in the US. A person like this probably wasted recklessly. The type of person who would fly cross-country a few times a year (at 1 tonne of CO2 per round trip) just to watch a football game. Someone who would drive his miniature ineffective tank everywhere, even just down the block. Someone who would double-bag groceries not with paper but plastic and then not recycle them.

Someone who used three-ply toilet paper.

This person needed to be reigned in, to be put in check. His acts (and Cliff was certain the H3 Driver was guilty of all of them) were characteristic of an environmental Pol Pot. Cliff walked calmly but determinedly back to his apartment. The door was still open when he walked through, the mess of the drums and the hemp rope astounded him. His passions had taken such a dramatic turn that it blinded him from what he had previously been trying to accomplish. Ashamed, he cleaned up the mess and then scraped himself up a vegan sesame burger while he brewed about how he should handle the perpetrator.

The first reaction was to alert the police, but somehow that didn’t seem sufficient. The H3 Driver might receive a slap on the wrist but nothing to curtail his polluting. Cliff paced through his apartment for hours, his footsteps drumming rhythmically. Nothing could distract him from the situation. The despicable life of the H3 Driver commandeered his mind.

The H3 Driver definitely returned home by now, probably being served his oversized, meat-rich, immensely wasteful dinner by his surgically enhanced and medicated wife who would be young and fit in the way that people who only do yoga are fit: shapely but still strangely unathletic. The prodigal ideal of the upper middle class and it sickened Cliff.

He needed to calculate the current carbon footprint of his offender, just so he could get the specifics. The creepy twinkle of the computer light spread in the darkness of the apartment. Carbonfootprint.com offered a CO2 emissions calculator. Cliff began to fill out, from what he imagined, the particulars of the H3 Driver’s life. He probably spent lots of money on his electricity and gas bill to light, heat and cool his oversized McMansion. There’s a half tonne to keep that. Plus there had to be at least 5 cross-country flights a year (although the H3 Driver wouldn’t fly out of the country because he was definitely a culturally ignorant asshole), which was almost 7 tonnes a year. Then there was the issue of the car, which was surprisingly not the largest polluting thing. It was only at 10.5 tonnes. Cliff didn’t add anything for motorcycles or public transport since the H3 Driver would probably pollute as much as possible at all times, motorcycles and public transportation were too efficient. When he started going through the eating habits, that’s where the most of the damage laid. 14.5 tonnes of CO2. The total of 32.6 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year was more than 8 average polluters from around the globe.  Not the 40 tonnes he expected, but it was still 30 more tonnes than the world goal per person.

Cliff wasn’t meant to hang himself, he was far too selfless. He was meant to help minimize the suffering of Mother Earth. He had to find the H3 Driver. It was quite easy to track him down. There was a website online that specialized in tracking license plates and Cliff placed his order just as easily as if he were ordering a pair of Patagonia Rhythm Hemp jeans off of Ebay. The driver didn’t live too far away, a few miles south off 2nd Street on the Marina. Cliff felt his resolve embolden.

He threw on his 100% upcycled sweatshirt, the one with the front Joey pocket, packed supplies and grabbed his bike. His sweatshirt jostled and jabbed. He crossed Broadway carefully in the pre-dawn dark and turned left on the next block onto Second Street. The early work traffic through downtown Belmont Shore was invisible to Cliff, he could only think of getting himself to this polluter. To his calling. What would he say?

He crossed the Reese Bridge and was momentarily snapped out of the zone as he saw miles of boats. Disgusting, oil-dependent, sea life killing boats. The H3 Driver probably had a gas guzzling boat that he let idle for hours or days on end.

 Cliff caught the downslope of the bridge and coasted without a single push. He swerved off the road onto Sorrento Drive and saw the blood red Hummer and started aggressively pedaling again. He couldn’t wait to not only taste sweet revenge but do what he, and many others, hadn’t been able to do.

When he reached the Hummer, he jumped off his bike. The note in his pocket gave the house’s address, just two doors down. It wasn’t quite as lavish as the other dockside residences, just a faded blue apartment complex.  Cliff climbed the stairs. The door was unlocked, the H3 Driver was home. Cliff opened the door quietly, there wasn’t a huge TV, there weren’t any overstuffed leather recliners, it was not a shrine to decadence. Only a modest, bulbous TV from the pre-flat screen era rested atop a wooden stand opposite a plaid cloth covered couch instead of leather chairs, and a small oval black coffee table separating them. The light wood floors were distressed from years of use and each one creaked as Cliff advanced towards the back room.

If any of this registered with Cliff, it didn’t show in his movements. He tracked those in the house like a hunter, crouching as he walked past the living room and turned right down the hall. A light shone out of the first door on the left, and he heard the low rustle of a woman’s voice and the meek splashes of water in a bathtub. She stepped out of the room, her dirty sweater pulled up to the elbows. She walked unathletically towards her bedroom, completely oblivious that Cliff was at the other end of the hall. It was the walk of a mother who was utterly focused on helping her child. And she was not going to be distracted for any reason. She was going to get to the room and get what she or, more importantly, her child needed.

Cliff followed her and as he passed the room he saw the bright light of the bathroom and kept on walking. He tried to keep his footsteps light, as light as a child’s. When he walked through the last door, where the mother had entered, he saw her pull out a large towel and gasp.  The dark roots of her hair betrayed her platinum blond locks. Her sleepless amber eyes begged, even if she couldn’t whisper a word.

Had he given her time to explain, he might have heard that her son was sick and had been hacking and coughing since the last morning. By the afternoon, his chest had become heavy to the point that he couldn’t breath. So she rushed her pride and joy into the car. The oversized Hummer was an ugly souvenir left behind by her husband before he had taken off with a 26 year-old flight attendant he had met on his frequent trips to Philly. She didn’t even like the car, but selling it was a hassle and she had more important things to do, like taking care of her son. She was in a hurry driving him to the hospital, carefully watching over him every second she got. She raced down Broadway but hit the light at Temple. She turned up the street in an attempt to save time. Her son started hacking again. Her gaze left the road to check on him for a moment. But as her eyes returned there was the bicyclist on the powder blue beach cruiser with an open six-pack in the basket.  She had to swerve at the last second. She grazed the car, but didn’t stop because of her son’s pressing need. She promised herself that she would return after her son was home safe. Cliff was a logical man to the extreme, and this knowledge might have saved her.

But he was at a dangerous point, he felt he had all the facts. No need for further explanation. He knew what he knew and that was enough. And in these moments there is no sympathy.

He felt more than emboldened now, he felt righteous. Divine. God-blessed. He took a step toward her and pulled a large black handled kitchen knife from the Joey pocket. She whimpered simple pleas.  She took a step back and fell on the bed with the child’s towel covering her, her screams muffled. Cliff’s grimace ripped across his face with rage and joy as he stabbed her chest. He first felt the resistance of the sternum but then it cracked and gave way to the lethal steel. Cliff watched as the mother’s life, her essence, quickly fled her body, and he joyfully imagined it absorbing back into the earth.

He flipped her over on her back. The black blood soaked in and imperially spread across the white sheets. He pulled up her shirt to see her bare back and he carved 32.6 tonnes CO2 X 42 years = 1,369.2 tonnes CO2 saved. He stood back and appreciated his equation and its visceral solution.

The first rays of the morning sun bounced off the marina water and into the room. Cliff took a deep breath and wondered why had it taken him all this time to get to this point. Why hadn’t he done this before? Clearly, it was his calling, the work he should have been doing all along. He wiped off the blade. A small fair-skinned boy dripped and coughed in the doorway. The boy made eye contact from under the shade of his brunette bangs. The crimson sun rose, beckoning Cliff for more.