All right, yep, you figured it out. Climate change isn’t caused by the heedless burning of fossil fuels pumping carbon into the atmosphere, trapping the sun’s heat and slowly increasing the average temperature of the earth. It’s my magic. Does that convince you? Nope. It’s not melting land-bound polar ice swelling the seas. It’s not an unnatural balancing of atmospheric pressure between the poles and tropics causing hurricanes to sluggishly crawl up coastlines, overflowing your rivers, and washing away your homes. It’s not the dissolving of carbon dioxide into the oceans that is raising the water’s acidity level, causing mass die-offs of fish and coral reefs. Nor is it a stalled jet stream that brought about a drought and extreme heatwave in Western Europe this summer, scorching crops and killing hundreds of people. It’s my wizardry. Uh-huh. I know what the scientists have been saying. Trust me. I spent six years and mortgaged my house to earn my witch-doctorate in climatology at MIT. Not only did I learn how to channel the Dark Lord’s occult powers to excite the ocean and atmospheric particles in a way that would be identical to the accumulation of heat energy radiated onto our surface by our closest star, but also to falsify scientific-sounding data consistent with the effect of greenhouse gases parking themselves in the atmosphere. Back in the late ‘70s, when I started my evil project, my masters-of-the-dark-arts thesis adviser was convinced no one would accept witchcraft as a reason for a planet-wide meteorological phenomenon. “Science is just too entrenched in our culture,” he said, “what with several centuries of explaining everything from the cause of disease to the motion of the planets.” (By the way, “imbalanced humors” and “God”, respectively.) I argued that the world was changing and the Enlightenment was just a passing fad. Rationalism, the scientific method, and agreement on a shared reality were old news. The world was ready for totally unsubstantiated, arcane reasons to explain the mysteries of the universe. Now, in 2018, the world is finally ready to hear the truth. You’ve proven it with your relentless, irrational skepticism in the face of all the evidence. I can drop the charade and reveal to you the true cause of global climate change: voodoo. Well done, I guess. What has piqued my ire? Why have I turned my potent sorcery to the destruction of the world? One thing: fossil fuels and their derivative products. Coal, petroleum, plastic, you name it. I just don’t like them. Give them up and I may still spare your planet. Never mind why. Just fear my magic and stop using them, all right? As your new weather demigod, I also command you to build monuments to my glory: solar panels in which I can admire my reflection, wind farms in which I can hear the song of the skies, and electric vehicles in which I can drive to get my groceries. Build these in my name and I’ll spare your fields, your grandchildren’s futures, and your low-lying coastal vacation properties. However, I will not help the polar bears because they suck. Now, go! Spread the word to your kinfolk to shun their SUVs, to cast down their coal shovels, and to embrace compostable straws and coffee lids in my name. And once you’ve done that, why not try my elixir that protects against measles, mumps, and rubella?
