About a month ago, a young well spoken guy came to my door. He represented the Sierra Club and wanted to talk about this phenomenon called 'Global Warming.' I looked up, and it was a cool cloudy day in Albuquerque. He told me about how are gas guzzling cars pollute the air, and I told him I was a cab driver. He hinted at getting some money, and I stated I wasn't helping any group financially at the time. I can be a barrel of fun at times.

The Sierra Club guy was not the first to use the phrase Global Warming. I know the weather is changing. We had the biggest snow in fifty years in my town this year. We had monsoon-like weather in May instead of August. Al Gore was the star of a movie about disappearing glaciers and Global Warming, and Hollywood hooks the flick up with an Oscar for best Documentary and best song (which was going a bit too far).

It's global warming. The globe is warming. We're warming the globe. We have to stop it. We have to change our ways.

Of course, when we talk about change, it usually means one thing. Buy a hybrid car, and you did what you could. 'You can barely hear it.' Turning the thermostat down one degree in the winter. 'Oo, it's chilly in here.' Giving twenty bucks to the Sierra Club. 'I did my part.' It's for Mother Earth. It's for the environment. Yeah, right.

If you really want to help Mother Earth, go hang out anywhere where civilization isn't. You'll find it's very quiet there. No light pollution, no noise pollution, no smog, no scouring of the earth, just land. Global Warming is happening there as well, and it's not complaining about it. Mother Earth does whatever it can to counter the acts and abuses of humans, but I'm sure if ants were as big as us, they would be tearing up the land right and left as well.

Don't get me wrong. I would love to see us using pollution-free vehicles that can still go eighty miles an hour. I would love to breathe clean air in big cities. I would love an American culture that embraced living with nature instead of in spite of it. Of course, when with humanity, do as the humans do.

Being a cab driver, I'm out cruising in all kinds of weather. 200 miles and 12 gallons of gas burned each shift. With summer on its way, I am already getting my left arm & knee tan. Even with global warming, I have to drive through sun, rain, snow & wind. I am not, nor have I ever been, in control of the weather. I am also not nor have I ever been in a position to change the behavior of humanity.

All we can really do is be conscious of what we're doing. I live in the desert, so I conserve water. I'm sure someone down the street is using more than they should, negating my conservative ways. Truth be told, I'm not conserving water because I'm trying to save the earth from Global Warming. I'm doing it because I've made it part of my lifestyle.

I also think that if we all became conservators of water, gas, heating and cooling that the weather would still be erratic, cyclical and evolving. I also think we would be better people in general. We wouldn't be saving the Earth as much as we'd be saving ourselves. Making the world a better place for our kids and grandkids and blah, blah, blah.

No one goes for the hippie commune theories anymore, and these days, many people actually scorn that lifestyle. I've been a hippie, a punk, a saint, and a sinner. I could have been a puppet, a poet, a pirate & a pauper. It wouldn't change global warming.

It seems like the phrase Global Warming is the excuse for any erratic weather patterns these day. Much like Victory is the excuse for continuing to occupy Iraq. Not much we can do to change Global Warming, and not much Victory we can attain in occupying a hostile land. They are catchphrases. They are excuses. They are rationales.

So change your lifestyle. Buy the low gas mileage cars. Think green. These are not bad things to do. But realize that you're not doing it for Mother Earth. You are doing these things for yourself. Whenever Mother Earth wants to get rid of us, she will just take away the oxygen, stop the rain, go out of orbit, or cease spinning. It really wouldn't be hard to get rid of humanity if we really became too big of a burden.

Trust me, it's not Global Warming that should worry us. It's ourselves.

Chris Jungle enjoys warm climates.