They’re coming for your houseplants

'cuz they're very needy...

First, they came for the gas stoves,

And I did not speak out

Because mine is electric.

Then they came for the dishwashers,

And I did not speak out

Because I use paper plates.

Then they came for the furnaces,

And I did not speak out

Because I keep the heat at 60.

Then they came for the houseplants,

And I did not speak out

Because I’m not a houseplant.*

Even though I’m not one, some of my best and oldest friends are. I have a jade plant that is a cutting of a cutting of a cutting of a cutting of a cutting that I bought as a sophomore in college over ten years ago. I have an eight-foot cactus that looks like it came right out of the Jurassic Age. I bought it many years ago for a six-figure sum. Fortunately, the seller of that houseplant threw in a house to sweeten the deal.

I was therefore distressed to see an article in the “news” paper owned by Jeff Bozo warning us that houseplants contribute to global warming. I wondered how that was possible, since plants don’t spew carbon; they instead absorb it, and spew oxygen.

This “reporter” admits that houseplants, like all plants, do absorb a bit of carbon. But he says the amount they absorb is very small, given that they themselves are relatively small. OK, I’ll give him that.

(The reporter could have made a better argument, if only he’d known a little science. A scientist would tell him that even the small amount of carbon that houseplants absorb is released back into the atmosphere when the plant dies and is burned or rotted in a landfill.)

This “reporter” went on to complain that the problem with houseplants is not what they do for us, but what they need from us. They need fertilizer to feed them. They need pots to contain them. They need trucks to transport them. They’re very needy.

Hmm. Let’s say for purposes of discussion that houseplant stuff like fertilizer, pots and trucks are indeed carbon-spewing, directly or indirectly.  But the quantity of fertilizer to feed the world’s houseplants can’t be remotely near the quantity needed for crops, can it? And what about plants in the park? They get fertilized too, so should we scape the parks clean of plants?

As for the pots, how much carbon is really spewed by the manufacture of houseplant pots? And how many miles are really driven by trucks to transport houseplants?

How often is the FedEx truck loaded down with philodendrons?

Whatever the numbers are for the global warming effect of houseplants and their needs, they’re surely a trillionth of the equivalent carbonaceous numbers for, say, feeding a dog. Or raising a child. Or, for that matter, building a taxpayer-subsidized house for Aspen grifters. Or operating a “news” paper.

Dogs, children and other members of the animal kingdom do indeed spew greenhouse gas. They use the oxygen in air to oxidize complex carbon-water molecules they’ve ingested such as carbohydrates (a contraction of “carbon” and “hydrate”). Like most other oxidation reactions (such as the combustion of wood and the rusting of iron), this chemical reaction generates net energy in the form of heat. The waste products of this reaction in animals are water and carbon dioxide which is exhaled to the atmosphere where it acts as a . . . [shudder!] . . . greenhouse gas.

So should we get rid of the dogs, the children, and all the other animals?

I’m reminded of a controversy in Aspen some years ago about whether to install an outdoor gas fireplace at a streetcorner near the base of the gondola. Greens gleefully scolded the rest of us that it would contribute to global warming. I ran the numbers, however, and concluded that the gas fireplace would generate only about one-twentieth the greenhouse gases of a single cow on the ranches near Aspen. (Cow flatulence is rich in methane, a greenhouse gas that is particularly noxious in every conceivable way.) Aspen could install a gas fireplace on every street corner, and it wouldn’t produce a fraction of the greenhouse gas effect of a few cows.

(Aspen did eventually install that gas fireplace, and even though I was in favor of it – this was one of the few battles I won in Aspen – the result has been catastrophic. Not because it warmed the globe, but because it attracted snowboarders to that particular streetcorner, each of whom by my calculation generates twenty-times the methane of a cow with one-tenth the attractiveness.)

You see, the left is not honestly trying to address problems. What they’re doing, dishonestly, is to feel and signal their virtue. The effects be damned, your houseplants be damned, and you be damned.

Or maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe they just like to order people around.

Either way, it’s time for the rest of us to speak out.

*Apologies to Martin Niemoller