NOTE: This is satire, not fact. Treat it as such.
Dr. Hans Rudolph Lickenschlipter (hereafter: Dr. Hans) is the leader of the world’s preeminent “cow fart research” team, a team of the top climate scientists that examines the effects of the methane released in cow flatulence on the world climate.
Dr. Hans was giving a speech at the recent climate conference in the French Riveria, which he of course reached by private jet (a Gulfstream G6 jet) and planned on leaving on the Climate Science Society’s 170-foot, diesel-powered yacht, on Tuesday the 19th of April when the weirdest thing happened: he broke down crying on stage, unable to continue the speech or even end with a Greta-style “blah blah blah”. Instead, he had to just be ushered off stage after demanding that the audience, demand their countrymen give up eating beef (but not them: someone had to be the reason a few Kobi beef cows were kept around).
Confused, the audience, which had arrived to the event in chauffered limos from their private jets, contritely pledged to pay for a few more carbon credits, credits the more cynical among them were calling “indulgences” when they were told to get out their checkbooks, when Dr. Hans returned to the stage. What he said next was shocking.
Speaking to the confused and worried audience, Dr. Hans said “Friends, it is with worry for my soul and contrition over the hell I have wrought, both on myself and the globe, that I announce my resignation from the climate society. For the past seven years, I have only studied cow farts. Day in and day out, I’ve demanded that poor people stop eating beef, complained about the climate effects of bovine flatulence, and generally made an ass of myself.
Well no more! Now I will tell you the truth. That truth is that none of us know what we’re doing. Everyone in my office is a poorly educated grifter, I flew here on a G6 jet because despite claiming to be worried about the climate I’m really just virtue signaling, and it seems the height of human hubris to think “meatless Monday” will save planet Earth.
And all you are worse! You don’t even get to grift like I did, other than in how you feel for being here! At least I had a reason: I was living high on the soy-based hog alternative off of your dime! Sure, other people had to take buses than airplanes and “eat ze bugs,” as Klaus likes to say, but I was living well! What do you get out of it? Nothing other than getting to feel better than the people that aren’t here! You’re all just a bunch of d*** hypocrites!”
Dr. Hans then walked off the stage and couldn’t be found again. The audience, disturbed, remarked that he must have just inhaled too many cow farts and they rotted his brain. Content, the crowd went back to eating Beef Wellington while demanding that Walmart stop selling beef.