The End Justifies the Memes

If you asked the average SUV owner why they chose their vehicle, they might say this:

“We have three kids and a dog, and all that space is handy when it comes to hauling around sports equipment and getting groceries. Also, I hate the earth and everything on it, and pray for its gradual immolation through climate change, so, that’s gravy. Would you like some gravy? Just picked up a drum of the stuff at Costco. Drove 90 miles to get it.”

Kidding. No, they wouldn’t say that. The average owner is blithely unaware that their four-wheeled murder machine is turning the planet into a lump of charcoal. How do you reach these people, and make them realize they should be hauled before the International Court of Climate Justice for choosing an immoral form of transportation?

Adbusters knows! They’re a “global network of activists writers artists designers hackers tricksters poets philosophers and punks.” Fun folk, no doubt. They tweeted:

“Time to do something about SUVs. They’re the 2nd-largest contributor to the increase in global CO2 emissions since 2010, more than aviation. This is a gentle escalation of methods to drive the urgency of this climate crisis home and engender a systemic aversion to SUVs.”

“Gentle escalation,” eh.

“Wedge gravel in the tire valves, leaflet the SUV to let them know the tires are flat and why it was done, and walk away. It’s that simple. If we organize, we can hit enough SUVs in particular neighborhoods to spark reporting and spread the metameme.”

If someone did this to me, I’d be tempted to kick them square in the metamemes and watch them escalate, gently or not. Then I’d reinflate the tire with my pump. It gets its power from the car. So I’d run the engine for an extra seven minutes per tire, thereby hastening the demise of the planet; instead of the biome collapsing at 10:47:23 a.m. in 2232, it would cease to sustain life at 10:47:22. Okay, I guess that one’s on me, but I really have to get to work.

If you don’t have a pump, you’ll have to call a tow truck, which Adbusters might think gets around with sails. I’m sure there are some fine minds hard at work at developing wind-powered tow trucks but stymied by the difficulty of backing up during the doldrums. It would be an inspiring sight to see a tow truck with all its sails deployed in its majestic glory, the riggings busy with sailors yanking on ropes to make the tight turn into the driveway, but if it were cloudy they couldn’t use the solar panels to power the air compressor. There’s also the discipline problem: With a large crew and a tyrannical captain, you risk mutiny. You’re already late getting the kids to school and yourself to work; now you have to explain to everyone that the tow-truck crew, possibly driven mad by scurvy, put you and the captain adrift in a wheelbarrow and sailed off for parts unknown.

Adbusters does not like your car, and has no interest in your reasons for having it. They also tweeted: “The mission is not to win individual converts at this point, but to engender a systemic aversion to SUVs.”

Uh-huh. And striking people repeatedly in the face with brass knuckles will engender a systemic aversion to metallurgy.

But but but! We are in a climate emergency, and that gives them the right to vandalize your property. They may believe that the sight of your deflated tires will anger you, but the explanatory note will cause the scales to fall from your eyes and clang on the driveway like manhole covers. A metameme has been sparked. You will run swiftly through a course of emotions — shock, fury, grief, shame, acceptance, ending in hope. You can be part of the change! Then you wrap the children in whale blubber for insulation, stuff them in faux-fur coats, and mush your way through the snow to the school. Bonus points if you all freeze to death on the way and decrease the surplus population. Reminder: Make a note in your will that you don’t want a funeral cortege, and everyone should carpool on the way to the cemetery. Also, you prefer to be composted in a hemp shroud.

Is there a right-wing-prankster version of this? I don’t think so. Someone might find a teacher who wants the preschoolers to read a book about trans parakeets, and suggest putting a banana in their tailpipe. But it’s difficult to imagine the Cato Institute telling its Twitter followers to let the air out of the tires of bureaucrats who write onerous regulatory policies so they can’t get to work. Even if it worked once, you suspect the regs would still get written.

Here’s another problem: Adbusters wants you to immobilize SUVs to prevent planetary death, but what of crossover SUVs? They’re like SUVs, but the chassis is smaller and lighter. You’d think they’d get a pass, but they have “SUV” in the name, so I guess it’s like “Nazi” and “neo-Nazi.”

At the time I wrote this, the tweets were still up; apparently Twitter does not regard this as speech to be throttled in the name of Public Safety. It being a Gentle Escalation and all that. But you’d probably get banned if you suggested running after the vandal and sticking a metal bar through the spokes of their bike, causing them to escalate, so to speak, over the handlebars. It would be a pity if they needed an ambulance in a town that had switched over to sail power.