The Gutman Group

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Turn up your thermostat to volcanic levels and start a bonfire in your backyard with the parkas you used to wear indoors!

Shower for hours on end – in gasoline! Finished showering? Leave the water on for a few more hours!

Leave all the lights on in every room to your heart’s content and even break into your neighbors’ houses and turn on all their lights as well – and don’t forget to turn up their thermostats while you’re at it!

Buy only things made out of plastic and throw recyclable goods into the garbage can!

Slap Al Gore in the face with your seventh special edition copy of “The Inconvenient Truth” and take a pick-axe to your Prius!

Why you ask?

Because everything you have been doing to save the planet from global warming has been based on misconstrued gibberish. Gibberish preached by fat old men who laugh maniacally as they twist their mustaches and twirl their ruby-encrusted walking sticks while you are busy replacing all your toilets for more environmentally friendly flushing ones.

I’m not going to go into much detail about Britain’s “Climate Research Unit” being hacked into a few weeks ago and emails divulged about scientists manipulating statistics in their favor nor the fact that Al Gore’s house uses up more power than an air craft carrier – but these things certainly do work in my favor!

Instead, I will go over some of the commonly heralded causes of and fixes to climate change and will explain to you why the only thing these heralds are doing is taking money out of your pocket (this is a site dedicated to money after all!) and what you should be doing to save the world instead.

Let’s get started!

Blow up McDonald’s

You were probably led to believe that the drivers of all cars, trucks and airplanes are as evil as Hitler’s Third Reich due to all of the carbon dioxide they emit and as we all know – CO2 is a greenhouse gas which will inevitably lead us to our imminent doom.

Actually, transportation isn’t what will actually cause us our earth to turn into a fiery ball of magma.

The real culprits are cows. Yes, cows.

Through their exhalation, flatulence, belching and manure, cows and their other cud-chewing friends emit methane gas. This methane gas is 25 times more potent than the stuff emitted by your good ol’ Ford Bronco. (Source: IPPCC’s Third Assessment Report)

In fact, these animals are responsible for 50% more green house gas emissions than the entire transportation sector combined.

So, throw out the keys to your brand new hybrid and leave it at your local junk yard, or, better yet, use it to run over some cows.

Or, if you’re an animal lover or simply don’t take much joy from running over live creatures at the expense of your vehicle, you can simply boycott McDonald’s and its ilk. Why? Let’s take a look at some numbers:

There are an estimated 1.3 billion cattle roaming around the world today – most of which are owned by beef-selling fast food companies such as McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, etc…

Just ONE cow produces 65 pounds of methane gas-filled excrement per day. Meaning, 1.3 billion cows produce 84.5 billion pounds of feces in a single day…that’s 30,842,500,000,000 (over 30 trillion) pounds of crap in one year!

That’s a whole lot of crap wrecking havoc on the environment.

So, what can YOU do to save the world?

Put down your Big Mac (or any beef-like concoction).

In a nutshell: the less beef you eat, the less demand there will be for it. And, abiding by the mighty laws of supply and demand: the suppliers (a.k.a. fast food moguls) will lower their supply of beef in order to meet the lower demand quota in order to subsidize their losses and maximize profits in more profitable areas.

In layman terms: Less people eating cows = less cows produced = less poop = less deadly greenhouse gases = the earth doesn’t turn into a ball of flame = problem solved. Nobel Peace Prize here I come!

By buying less beef, not only are you saving the earth you are also saving yourself, your wallet and a decent chunk of humanity.

First of all, beef’s favorite substitute, chicken tends to be cheaper at an average price of $1.96 per pound versus $3.88 per pound for beef (prices from the USDA). According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United States, the average person eats about 270 pounds of meat every year (you fat ass!).

So that means: if your meat intake consists of only beef, you are dishing out about $1,047.60 on beef as opposed to $529.20 for chicken every year – a difference of $518.40. Take that $518.40 and invest it every year, growing at an annual compounded rate of return of 20% and you will have just under $20,000 in ten years, $136 thousand in twenty years and $858 thousand in thirty years…

…or you could be $15 thousand poorer and be fighting off a whole concoction of diseases and other fun stuff brought on by your obesity. Why? Because beef’s mentally challenged brethren, chicken and fish tend to be significantly healthier and leaner.

And as we all know, the more fat-filled crap you eat, the more likely you are to become obese and die. And as we all should know but too few of us realize: Obesity and its cousin (laziness) cause diabetes, heart disease, weak immune systems and a whole sack of other fun stuff which costs a ridiculous amount of money to treat.

So, next time you’re about to take a bite of that juicy Big Mac remember that all you are doing is partaking in the destruction of the earth, making yourself fatter and poorer and promoting the death of sad little cattle with big googly eyes.

Or, you can go for an even longer-term approach: eat so many cows that the demand for beef will skyrocket resulting in so much cattle produced that the entire earth’s surface be covered in cow crap, releasing so much methane gas that the earth explodes into a fiery ball of flame ultimately killing off all the cows.

Decisions…decisions…

The government and its shenanigans

They might not be controlling our minds via chips embedded in our brains (although I still wear a tin foil hat at all times – just in case), but the government is definitely reaching into our wallets and viciously devouring our pathetic savings construed as incentives to save the environment.

How, you ask? Many cities have started taxing people for plastic bags and bottled water in order to promote the use of more environmentally friendly substitutes. And don’t even get me started on all of the taxes and what-not they are imposing on air conditioning and travel.

Little did they know (or care) that their measly efforts to reduce the use of plastic bags, air-conditioning and extraneous travel accounts for just 2% of global carbon-dioxide emissions…the rest as a result of natural forces such as plant decay and malevolent cows.

Of course many people will argue that the thirty bucks or so that are ripped out of their deadly kung fu grips every year isn’t that much money – and I will agree with them; then again, being as rich as I am will result in relatively few financial woes.

But when you think about it, that $30 that is taken from you for no apparent reason can amount to a whole month’s worth of internet access, talking on your cell phone and even your medication. And when applied to millions of people, in a timeline of many years – that’s a whole lot of big fat moneybags!

And these are just the explicit costs – costs that you see outright. It’s the implicit costs (the ones that you can’t immediately see) that are really the deal breaker here.

Digging deeper

Bottles

By imposing a tax on bottled water, people who used to buy bottled water will be more inclined to now purchase soft drinks, you know, the kind that have more sugar in them than Paris Hilton has sexual partners.

As we all know (or at least should know) soft drinks promote obesity, tooth decay, caffeine dependence and some studies even show that it causes bone weakening.

You can argue the minutiae of the effect of soft drinks all you want but one thing we can all agree on is: the more you soft drinks you drink, the more likely you are to die. End of story.

So, put down your nine-gallon bucket of Coke or risk trading in your bungalow for a hospital room (for which you will have to pay for).

Plastic Bags

No longer do you have to feel bad about not buying those stupid environmentally friendly tote bags and then looking like a sissy for carrying your peaches and yams around in a purse-like fashion, knowing the puny results that come from it are not worth you trading in your comfort.

In fact, next time you see one of those stands telling you to save the environment by dishing out a few bucks for a tote bag, you have my permission to burn it down with a tank full of gasoline while kicking a baby panda square in the jaw.

“Extraneous” Travel

Sure, jet fuel causes CO2 emissions. Sure, jet fuel costs money. Sure, some people travel more than they should.

But then again, stop traveling and live knowing that you helped cause a good chunk of Europe to trade in their diets chock-full of baguettes, lamb and tea for buckwheat: According to Getty, 6% of France’s, 11% of Italy’s, 15% of Croatia’s and 11% of Spain’s GDP are derived from the tourism industry. That’s a whole lot of business.

The travel industry is responsible for hundreds of thousands of much needed jobs (with unemployment at its highest level in decades) along with very necessary billions of dollars in revenues. And considering overseas travel to the United States has fallen by almost 20% in recent years (according to CNN), you environmentalists have to ask yourselves: is reducing a few sacks of greenhouse gas emissions worth spiraling your country even further into an already deep recession?

Followed by Mr. Moneybags (that would be me) asking myself, is over-exaggerating a simple scenario to gargantuan proportions worth getting my point across? Without a doubt.

Burn down your Prius and beat it to bits with your solar panels

Every second Thursday of the month, a gang of ridiculously rich and insane lunatics such as myself each grab a pickax, a pair of pliers and a blow torch and get to work on ridding the world of this insane hybrid/Prius disease.

It seems that we just can’t understand why people would overpay many thousands of dollars for a product such as a Prius thinking they are saving the environment when a couple cows do more environmental damage than a parking lot full of Hummers.

That doesn’t seem to faze people, because their excuse is that they save money on gas by driving a hybrid car while they laugh maniacally at gas guzzlers passing as they install their solar panels on to their roofs.

First of all, solar panels only absorb under 20% of the sunlight that they are exposed to – the other 80% being dispersed as heat and, you know, warming up the earth and stuff which, if I understand correctly, you installed them to prevent that very occurrence in the first place.

Secondly, hybrid cars are more expensive than their gas guzzling brethren and for this luxury you must pay a premium of a few thousand dollars. Now, a lot of you will say that I have the brain power of a rather bland chipmunk because you will argue that the money you save on gas will make up for the premium paid ten times over.

Only to realize that you have the brain capacity of a very intelligent piece of cabbage, for it will take a Prius over 10 years to pay for it’s ridiculous premium and over 5 years for the most fuel-efficient hybrid car of the bunch, the Honda Civic Hybrid.

[Disclaimer: of course these statistics will change year over year as cars improve, gas prices fluctuate and the fact that different countries have different prices for different cars, but the fact remains: Hybrids are for losers.]

Now, unless you are one of those people that keeps their car for longer than four or five years without looking at it in complete disgust then a hybrid might be a good idea for you. On the other hand, if you don’t want to look like a sissy in your little Prius and drive around in a decade old car then I have won this argument. Case closed.

In Closing

It must be tough to admit that everything you thought you knew was wrong, but it’s okay, at least I feel good about myself. In fact, after researching all the facts for this article I went out and bought the biggest Hummer I could find for myself and each member of my family and friends along with unlimited gas cards for an entire year.

In hindsight, that might not have been the smartest idea considering that I have pending lawsuits from the following people and organizations as a result of this article:

Al Gore, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Britain’s Climate Research Unit, Burger King, Toyota, Paris Hilton, Environmentally friendly tote bag makers, Honda, Cows, Cow farmers, Arby’s and the government.

I am expecting a few more over the course of the next few weeks, I’ll keep you posted.

Now, put down that burger, get into your pick-up truck and go kick a cow square in the membrane while running over a McDonald’s executive to get there – the earth will thank you!

[A Real Disclaimer: Of course I will admit that cows are not solely responsible for the imminent explosion of the earth and admit that significantly more has to be done to curb the issue of climate change than simply getting rid of a few cows - a rather hefty onus still falls on to the driver. The main purpose of this article was to introduce a different perspective to the issue of climate change that the average person fails to realize.]

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