From the Vaults: Vintage 2007 Goldberg

A recent redesign of Facebook made old Notes more prominent--reminding me that I had written some, including a short-lived column called "Just Ask Jimmy" with advice on everything from caring for your pet badger to avoiding spiked lemonade at innocent-looking street-corner stands. I have decided to re-post Volume 3, Issue 12 (in which I respond to a query from one neighbor to the north about another) to preserve the general flavor of my juvenalia. Please note that I can take credit only for the answer, not for the initial query from one of my countless (or so) readers:  

Hey Jimmy,

Just one question. Global warming: truth or conspiracy?

-Not So Hot in Idaho


Dear Not So,

I’m so glad you asked, but I’m afraid you phrased the question wrong. People as wise and wiser than I am recognize that not everything can be seen as either/or. So before answering your question, I’ll have to break it down into two parts.
 
Question: Is global warming real? Answer: Yes.
 
Question: Is it a conspiracy? Answer: Also yes.
 
You see, global warming is not a conspiracy of alarmists, designed to slow the economy or generate more work for journalists by adding yet another layer to the daily news. It’s a conspiracy of a much more sinister nature. The goal? World domination. The evil mastermind? Canada.
 
That’s right: my shocking recent research shows that our “friendly” neighbor to the north is perhaps not so “friendly” as many United States of Americans might think. A careful analysis of the revisionist history taught in Canadian schools shows a definite aggressiveness embedded in their culture: they count both our Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 as ending in clear Canadian victories, even though every student in the U.S. knows that the only war in which Canada clearly beat us was Vietnam. Obviously, Canada has long resented the way that the United States has upstaged them in world affairs.
 
An alert reader, who also happens to be a free-lance secret agent, recently sent me evidence supporting my long-held belief that Canada has been doing more than passively resenting us over the past 20 years. In a file labeled “Bacon” (the Canadian word for “ham”), my F-L.S.A. friend found documentation of the secret initiative Canada launched at the end of the Cold War to make sure they, and not the U.S., would be the lone superpower by 2050.
 
Out of several proposed plans, one was ultimately chosen: Canadian scientists confirmed that increased greenhouse gas emissions would cause an irreversible but contained process of global warming. Global warming would, obviously, damage or devastate many of the world’s countries, especially those in already-warm areas and those with long coasts and large river systems. At the same time, Canada would see a 143% increase in arable land, a 96% increase in income from tourism, and an end to its long-standing, crippling dependence on banana imports.
 
Canada, of course, was not about to rest content with this subtle shift in the balance of world power. They planned to open their borders to immigrants fleeing China, India, and other river-infested countries: highly educated ones to make them world leaders in science and technology, but also uneducated ones to give them the largest standing army on earth, with which, as the Bacon files attest, they plan to seize Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, and other post-global-warming powerhouses of American agriculture, thus leveraging the crises to put themselves in a position as the world's only superpower.
 
“I can see,” you are probably saying to yourself, “that Canada could use global warming to become the most powerful nation in the world. But does that mean they are causing it? Isn’t Canada one of the leaders in the fight against global warming?”
 
To which I respond: that’s part of what makes this plan so diabolical. Canada intentionally set itself up as a world “leader” against global warming, knowing that this would automatically make the cause seem nerdy, marginal and unattractive. At the same time, they set their most secret, most talented mole to work in the United States, to stymie any effective international co-operation against global warming and to accelerate the process of increased greenhouse-gas emissions. The mole’s birth name was Alexander Winkel Hamilton, Jr.; he was a child prodigy and the son of one of Saskatchewan’s top Mounties. As a very young child, however, he was secretly swapped with the son of an affluent and powerful American family, putting him in an ideal position to amass power and use it for the benefit of his native Canada.
Watch this column for further information on the meteoric rise and manipulation of power by this Canadian mole, known to most as George W. Bush, President of the United States of America.

-J.A.J.