Oil companies and their trade groups have spent $17m directly on political social media advertisements since May 2018. – The Guardian
Twitter will allow advocacy groups to run ads that promote environmental protection. But they will not be allowed to push for a political or legislative change… – Reuters
Hello teens. We are on the Twitter now, because we are cool. We are fun. We are definitely not acidifying the ocean. (Also, we gave Twitter like a million dollars to try to shut up the hippies, but mostly the first thing.)
Just this morning, we made a “meme.” Actually, it is just a Powerpoint slide that says “CLIMATE LIES BAD,” but my grandson Brandon promised to help with the Twitter sometime, so expect big things! So far, we do not know how to do the emojis, but we are excited to learn.
Once Brandon helps us, here is what our meme will say: science is fake and wrong. On one hand, 97% of climate scientists say that climate change is real and caused by fossil fuels. But on the other hand, ugh math, are we right ladies? (This is the kind of fun, harmless joke that we are now getting yelled at for. We do not understand!)
For years, you were fine with Big Oil. You went on road trips with us. You fired up the grill with us. But now that you’re teenagers you want to rebel. Suddenly we are “old” and “embarrassing” and “exploiting the indigenous people of Ecuador.” If you want to talk about human rights violations, why doesn’t Brandon call anymore? He joined something called the Sunshine Movement at his school, and I am “cancelled” now.
Even if the Earth is warming, is that bad? The Earth was very warm during the dinosaurs, and did anything bad happen to them? No, and they got to become beautiful oil. Actually, CO2 has warmed the planet many times in the past, and only one of those times is called the “Great Dying.” Now, that may sound bad – but like Taylor Swift says, shake it off! (That’s right – we know who Taylor Swift is, because Brandon told us once. We Are Cool.) Science is boring, but mass extinction could be fun, you just gotta give it a chance! Mass extinction also kind of sounds like Mass Effect – we have no idea what that is, but we hear Brandon talking about it sometimes when he plays his video games, and it sounds cool. Do you think those researchers know about the Mass Effect? No, they do not, because they are not fun like us.
You may have heard that some of our own scientists are currently testifying against us in court, and saying that we knew about the Mass Effect or the mass extinction or whatever. (Which we do, because we are cool.) This is what Tay-Tay calls bad blood, and they are fake friends. We have deleted them from the group chat or the Snapchat or whatever the chat is. Dear teens, know this: they are nerds, we are fun, and the fracking should go on forever.
One of the main reasons why we are fun – in addition to the doing of the video games and the listening of Taylor Swift – is that we are job creators. Here are a few of the wonderful jobs we have created: oil rig engineer, firefighter for oil rig, PR rep to deny oil rig fire, fire consultants, more PR reps after the first one wusses out – uh, you know what, we are also looking for a social media guy. People keep commenting mean things on our “memes,” and it’s just not fair! We paid Twitter so much money for them.
As one of our favorite rappers says, “money, money, money.” (We are afraid to quote the song more because we don’t know what words are okay for us to say. Also, we don’t listen to rap, and it deeply frightens us.) And yes, we are very rich. But everyone always says “ok boomer,” not “are you ok, boomer?” The teens bullied Joe Biden into cancelling his dinners with us, and we miss him. We miss Brandon, and he didn’t even tell us what “cancelled” means. Also, not all of us are boomers – some of us are just okay with deep-frying the atmosphere and figuring it out later, don’t judge.
At the end of the day, it’s just not true that we don’t have a plan for climate change. Like we said, we’ll figure it out. And we do have a vision – sitting on the last shuttle to Mars, eating a delicious steak made of the last humpback whale. Doesn’t that sound fun? (Sadly, not all of you will fit on the Mars shuttle. We are only taking the very best youths – Taylor Swift can come if she wants, or whoever the least scary rapper is.)
As popular teen movie Sixteen Candles says, we’re just a sprawling multinational oil conglomerate, standing in front of the teens, asking them to love us, or at the very least return Brandon. Is that not Sixteen Candles? Dammit. Why is meme-ing so hard? At this point it would almost be easier just to admit the science nerds are right.
NOTE: Brandon, if you are reading this, please come home. Grandpa loves you. I’m saving you a seat on the Mars shuttle even though you are a hippie now.