Three cheers for corporate “neutrality” on the topic of our annihilation. Late last week, while the company’s stock tumbled, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared a five-minute sketch in which he and a soft, kindly team of marketing eunuchs nervously prepared for the arrival of “Mother Earth,” a no-nonsense fat black goddess played by the critically-acclaimed actress Octavia Spencer.

The plot was fairly straightforward: while the goddess’ intention was to hold Tim accountable for each of his broken environmental promises, she was surprised to discover Apple’s remarkable progress on the company’s path to corporate greening. In the end, she awarded Tim’s team a ‘job well done,’ and Tim promised, nonetheless, to do better. A kind of ‘three cheers for us, and sorry for existing.’

Now, I would love to tell you the country was hotly divided over the “we hate global warming” commercial until I appeared, in a blaze of wit and insight, with a novel take that thread the poles and brought us all together. But the truth is just, from the moment it dropped, we all agreed it was embarrassing as hell. Like, deeply embarrassing. As in, possibly the most embarrassing thing the company has ever produced (and I was on the internet when ‘scarf guy’ dropped). Within minutes of the commercial’s release, the company was lambasted from the cultural right for tone deaf leftist dogma, and from the cultural left for still being, at the end of the day, a corporation. Reaction from the tech industry was a little more thoughtful, if a little more somber, with a common theme of calling back to an earlier, better Apple: how did the company responsible for “1984,” a passionate, anti-authoritarian defense of individuality, become the megaphone for quivering, impotent state orthodoxy?

Strangely, however, the actual subject of Tim’s humiliating self-flagellation was left mostly unexamined. Global warming — or is it environmentalism? It gets confusing — was simply not a topic of discussion. Is the company helping to correct what is, I’m often told, an existential crisis? In terms of making the world a more hospitable place for humans, are Apple’s efforts doing any good?

Are these even the company’s goals?

While perfectly acceptable for the most valuable company in history to dedicate itself to making the world a better place, the initiatives highlighted in the commercial were — separate from the overall clownish delivery — simply not that. In the first place, Apple’s well-intentioned environmental policies range from basically fine to actively damaging, and especially in terms of American national interest. Then, and much more importantly I think, Apple’s stated goal is carbon “neutrality,” which is to say the company openly admits the absolute best we can expect from them is literally nothing. But “nothing” is not the purpose of technology. The purpose of technology is improvement, and for the world to improve it has to change. For a technology company, there’s no running from tech’s essential nature without looking like a liar, nor should anyone in tech want to run from the story of a dynamic, abundant future. This is all to say I am once again begging you people: for the love of God, less of the Greta Thunberg “spank me, mommy” misery shit, and more technologically progressive utopian awe.

Now, before we move onto the techno utopian Cliff’s Notes, I do need to get something out of the way: my problem with the Apple commercial is not the focus on global warming (if, again, it can really be argued that was the focus at all). In fact, for me, the discourse was perfectly timed. I just hit the beach a few weeks back, where I experienced, for the first time in my life, the eerie sensation of bathwater-warm ocean water. Floridian sea surface temperatures broke 100 degrees this summer. That is (maybe?) a world record, and in water that warm we will inevitably face Angry Old Testament God-level hurricanes. Here, for the unconvinced, and including especially the “global warming is a ‘natural’ phenomenon” guys, I’d simply ask you consider the following: who cares? It’s “natural” for human beings to freeze to death when it starts to snow. A long time ago, humans decided dying when it snowed was stupid, and terraformed the cooler climate with shelter and heating. Because of that decision you and I exist.

It’s good to change the world. We need to be changing the world more often. The problem with Apple is not that the company is looking to change the world, it’s that they’ve framed themselves as deeply caring about the issue, but have no apparent intention to actually pursue the goal.

Apple’s stated goal is carbon neutrality, and to get there they’ve adopted a strategy of carbon offsets, “sustainable” energy, and recycling. When offsets are narrowly confined to financially compensating carbon sequestration projects geared toward reducing the amount of carbon in our atmosphere — rather than subsidizing the use of wind farms and electric stoves, for example, which are much more tethered to the goal of “nothing” as a moral platitude — offsets are great. We also love “recycling,” and in particular Apple’s focus on recycling cobalt (though it’s for sure a little crazy that we’re basically admitting here we have a child labor problem, and will for years to come). But “sustainable” energy is where I start to wonder… what is really the point of these initiatives?

While solar may be “carbon neutral,” it definitely isn’t “clean” — not in an environmental sense, not in a moral sense, and certainly not in any kind of American strategic sense. 80% of solar panels are produced in China, mostly in factories powered by coal. We now know many are built by slaves. This is to say nothing of the batteries necessary for storing solar power, which are largely reliant on rare earth metals secured (in mines owned by China) and processed (in facilities owned by China) around the world in miserable conditions, nor their toxic impact on the environment, which I was told that we were worshiping. As Americans are not, by law, permitted to mine or process the materials necessary to build the panels or batteries ourselves, let alone equipped to do so in almost any corner of the country, there is at present no solar future that doesn’t speak Chinese, as the nation of Xi has cornered every single piece of this supply chain. In this 21st Century globalist hellscape there is no escaping, for any one of us, the human rights reality of our consumption. But we are also, for these choices, increasingly at the mercy of a foreign dictator who appears to be at least as rational as he is malevolent. So what are we doing here?

There’s no rational reason solar has become the most popular “sustainable” energy among the FernGully left. In fact, I think the choice is probably best explained by a cultish aesthetic obsession with the perception of photosynthesizing like plants (seriously). As the FernGully left shapes culture, a strong support for solar energy insulates its proponents from criticism, while a focus on things like nuclear and — God forbid — natural gas, a far less carbon-intensive fossil fuel than coal or oil, of which America has massive stores, generally attracts a range of negativity from undue scrutiny to rage. But the real thing missing from this conversation, which Apple has now assumed for the entire industry, has less to do with heated battle over which energy source produces the least amount of carbon than it does with a glaring omission: if the planet is already too warm, what are we doing to remove the excess carbon already in our atmosphere? This omission is, at least, easy to explain.

The topic of global warming, generally understood to be a discussion pertaining to whether humans are impacting our environment, and how to reverse that impact, is fundamentally concerned with human welfare. This is related to, but not the same as, environmentalism, which is generally understood to be concerned with doing “good” (a moral quality historically applied to humans) for the “environment” (conceived of by the faithful as a non-living, pseudo spiritual entity). While the former concept is home to a range of people, from policy wonks to soccer moms suspicious of the weather, the latter concept is principally home to an irrational, cultish group of people who worship “nature.”

While the overall goal of reducing carbon in the atmosphere denotes an interest in human well-being, an overall goal of ‘preserving nature’ precludes man-made change to the planet of any kind, for any reason. There is meaningful overlap between the two goals, for sure, which is why the alliance has persisted for years. But the various players aligned with both goals have always been uneasily aligned, and to keep the band together for purposes of bringing down carbon emissions (‘screwing the industrialists,’ in assorted flavors), rational actors in the alliance have for years avoided the crucial topic of change, which is deeply unsavory to the religious left.

But I am not a pagan “Mother Earth” guy, and “neutrality” is just not really in my nature. It’s time for new alliances. And here, I’m throwing my hat in the ring.

A decrease in long-term carbon emissions is a fine, whatever goal, but only insofar as humans are still increasing energy consumption every year, as this is what’s required of an actually progressive society, in which everyone gets to eat and live like your average speaker at the World Economic Forum. To this effect, America should start with a policy of natural gas and nuclear. Concurrently, our first major goal is a reduction of the global temperature, not stasis. This requires a reduction of the carbon in our atmosphere. To its credit, Apple has approached this problem with the somewhat primitive, if surprisingly useful strategy of planting shit tons of trees. That is both lovely — who doesn’t love a lush, mushroom-spotted, low-key haunted forest? — and unironically helpful. We should continue to plant shit tons of trees. We should also genetically modify these trees to grow faster, and suck up more carbon. But we should also employ large scale geoengineering projects like ocean seeding, and (apparently?) roll back our shipping regulations on sulfur, a thing we called “pollution” last century that seems to have been inadvertently cooling our sea surface for decades. Finally (for now), we need to be seaflooding.

A series of canals from the ocean to below-sea-level deserts in Australia, Africa, and even California will produce a series of man-made lakes so massive we can see them from space. This will be, in the first place, awesome. But each megalake will also trigger hydrologic cycles in previously barren wastelands like the Sahara. The wastelands will green. The global sea level will drop. The world’s beachfront property will grow, and nobody will ever starve again.

Also, we’re bringing back the wooly mammoth. I’m still not sure how that will help us cool the planet, but give me a few weeks. I’ll think of something.

In pursuit of our new strategy of progress, all the wonkish Greta girlies actually interested in reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere will need to find new political allies. These allies should be, in my humble opinion, hard ass shitposting tech elites.

Now, with our goals a bit more clearly stated, it’s time to address, with coherence and persistence, our leaders. This includes both our politicians, and our virtue-signaling CCP puppets (mere speculation, of course). Our line of questioning for both should look something like this: do you believe this planet belongs to human beings? Do you believe your purpose, in addressing the issue of climate, is to produce the best possible climate for the greatest number of Americans? And, finally, how do you plan on decreasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, increasing our arable land, and “changing the world”? Actually, I mean. As in, please pull out some diagrams and charts and a little laser pointer or whatever and physically show me the path to your intended impact.

Because here’s an inconvenient truth: if the fate of humanity hinges on a carbon neutral watch we are absolutely, totally, irredeemably screwed.

The goal is abundance.

-SOLANA