“President Trump on Thursday announced he was erasing the scientific finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.” — The New York Times
A new ruling from the Trump administration says that when the sun disappears at night, we don’t know where it goes. All remaining top scientists have been taken from their positions and tasked with getting to the bottom of this.
The National Institutes of Health has orders to devote every whiteboard in every conference room to this pressing question. In the Oval Office, under the gold leaf, the president and his advisers are making a big list of possibilities:
The sun might be on the back of a big beetle—a dung beetle, maybe. (The EPA will work to determine what kind of beetle.) Where is the beetle going with it? Will the beetle bring it back?
Or maybe the witches take it. (They are pretty sure in the White House that witches are real.)
Maybe the immigrants steal the sun in the evenings.
Maybe the sun is the yellow scribble in the top corner of the page with sunglasses drawn on it in marker, and it disappears when someone puts it in a drawer. (But who? Emmanuel Macron?)
Maybe the sun is in Greenland. (If so, it is even more important to get control of Greenland.)
Maybe Bad Bunny has taken the sun hostage and is keeping it in his halftime grass. (He must be held to account.)
Maybe the groundhog knows. (Can the groundhog be made to talk?)
Maybe Jerome Powell has put the sun in his office.
Maybe the children have the sun, and we had better warehouse them all in Texas until one of them gives it up.
Maybe a wolf swallows it.
Maybe Mark Kelly and several other dissident members of Congress are hiding the sun in a big bag. (He got the bag when he was in space. Fortunately, soon only billionaires will be allowed to visit space and get the bags for the sun, and they will be required to give the bags to the president directly.)
Maybe Hillary Clinton ate it. (We put nothing past her.)
It’s very frightening when the sun goes away, now that we have decided we don’t know where it goes at night.
You can just decide that you don’t know things, it turns out, even if you do know them. You can simply decide to forget progress. Disease is caused by miasma, insufficient beef tallow, corn syrup, the evil eye. You can simply decide to burn coal and witches and books again.
Be especially sure to burn the books. We must do whatever we can to make light until the sun comes back.
I hope it comes back soon.
The post Trump Administration Announces That We Don’t Know Where the Sun Goes at Night appeared first on The Atlantic.
