Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for February 18, 2024

jbmlaw01 almost 10 years ago

If you want to eliminate pollution, abolish the EPA. 40 years of experience should be enough to persuade. Instead of brainlessly delegating the responsibility to 9-5 bureaucrats, we would then be personally responsible. Plus, it would save the country a fortune.

Calvin both throws and talks trash.

Calvin the recycle hero

Or to quote from another wonderful comic strip, Pogo:

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

We aren’t getting smarter. This year’s presidential race proves how dumb we are.

Sadly, 30 years later, the corporates and polluters are getting worse and more brazen about it.

Someone has to give Cal-Trans something to do other than rest on shovels.

The problem with mankind is that when people finally start to get wiser, they die – replaced by more dumb people.

One of my favorite C & H comics

In his book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People”. Rabbi Harold Kushner says that humans are the only ones endowed by God with the power of choice, but that they consistently choose evil.

IMHO, that alone makes Man vastly inferior to the so-called “lower” animals, who are guided by instinct.

Lesson from the past. The environmental situation has progressively worsened since this panel was published. I bet there are children Cal’s ‘age’ who have better ideas of how to improve the environment than any talker with a degree.

To be honest, I feel it will make things worse.

Great cartoon today.

Just bloody brilliant. Thank you Bill.

A brilliant strip in which Watterson is using Calvin to express his own anger. He says that he often disagrees with what Calvin says so the strip – and Hobbes – ridicule what Calvin is saying. Sometimes, he and Calvin are in agreement. They both prefer animals to human beings and they both care about nature and the environment.

This was first published 30 years ago, and things have only gotten worse. From this we can conclude that politicians don’t read Calvin and Hobbes.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here! Our environment, our planetary home, soon will be toast. Literally.

Ha!! We’ll All pass out before “getting smarter happens“ the trump problem is living proof of that!

The thought behind today’s comic is so very true. However, people like The Count who wholeheartedly believe in, endorse and practice what Calvin is preaching are not the problems. It’s the ones who do not. Calvin is preaching to the choir, a good thing, and perhaps the Sopranos need to get more actively involved with those who do not.

Mr. Watterson was a bit prescient with this one.

why do people litter??

Why are people such thoughtless and short-sighted creatures?

This is because of our sinful nature. We tend to reject God and the path He lays out for us. Instead, we embrace Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Anger, Sloth, and Gluttony. Pride is the worst- we build idles both physical and in thought. We idolize our own selves and invent our own ways – because it “feels” good. We Glorify ourselves rather than God.

Turn to God. All things should be for his Glory. Preserving the Earth, yes. But even more important – preserving each of our own souls. Jesus seeks to save the World. Turn to Jesus for your answers. Seek him, repent from your sins and seek earnestly to sin no more.

“The Kingdom of God is at Hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel”!

It is a false dichotomy to say that there are only two alternatives: The EPA vs. horrible pollution. The problem is that pollution isn’t viewed the way it should be, namely as a violation of property rights. If it was looked at that way, and there was true protection of property rights, there would be no need for a huge bureaucratic infrastructure.

Man will never learn….☹️☹️☹️

“You think we’ll get smarter?”…If you look at most social media, you get the answer!

Applies to all federal agencies and problem solving

My father and grandfather always taught us to not leave anything behind when camping.

Calvin and his alter ego Hobbes being used as mouthpieces for Watterson’s misanthropy.

Yeah guys we’re pretty much screwed.

Calvin, why don’t you go get a big green garbage bag, pick everything up and put it in the trash?

Here in Canada Trudeau bans straws and plastic spoons to “Save the Oceans” but allows plastic fishing nets, which have been proven to be the worst pollutant in the ocean because our Indiginous peoples still use them. who’s running the asylum?

Every time I watch the movie Kingsman, I root for Valentine. He had the right idea in that humans are a virus. There are only two possible outcomes as Hobbes knows.

“Evolved as thoughtless, shortsighted, FERTILE creatures.”

Precisely NO other organism worries about pollution. The closest they come is to want waste out of their neighborhood — which is exactly what every human wants.

NIMBY

No one has said it yet, but Pogo Possum said it best “We have met the enemy, and he is us”.

Poignant … This one escaped my view before it went into syndicated rerun … Still relative today.

Not so far….

CSM has a feature called “Points of Progress” which documents small improvements to the environment all over the world. Worth reading if you’re tired of gloom and doom scenarios.

Humanity will be a self-solving problem.

From all that I have read on the subject, Earth will survive no matter what we do to it. Mankind on Earth may not survive itself. The Earth without mankind will eventually regenerate itself and be a delightful place again. Sad.

The planet won’t miss us, that’s for sure.

Hobbes has it right, let’s all hold our breath. Wouldn’t want to exhale and contribute CO2 to global warming, would we? Man is an evolutionary triumph and disaster. Every solution brings about more unforeseen problems.

let me preface this by saying that without some kind of environmental regulations, we’d be living on a junk pile. oh, wait. we already are. here in the boondocks of japan, folks seem to believe that all garbage goes back to nature if you just bury it in the back yard or burn it. this, despite regulations that have been in effect for aeons now. with all good intentions, politicians enacted laws to specify how appliances should be recycled, the immediate (instant) effect of which was that people who couldn’t be bothered to jump through hoops began dumping their refrigerators, washing machines, and computers out in the woods in even greater numbers than before. i’ve cajoled my landlord, but he still burns his recyclable plastics. still, even though it’s easy and free to recycle here. when i’m working in our veggie patch, the members of the fishing cooperative down the road have a blazing bonfire going to burn nylon ropes and any plastic that happens to be lying around, creating a godawful stench, not to mention poisoning the air. our next door neighbor has years and years of trash buried in her yard, stuff her parents just stuck in the ground. she just ignores it as she weeds the garden.

this is just a tiny corner of our planet. my wife and i recycle assiduously and make sure to separate our trash as specified according to the latest regulations. we’re slowly cleaning up the property where are veggie patches are. but most people don’t follow the rules, or even make a show of trying to. it’s really a puzzle as to what incentives would get people to actually finally stop polluting the world around them…

“You haven’t seen what’s to come. You’ve only seen what you’re afraid is coming. Until it arrives […] all you can see is fear.” – Tony Kushner, Angels in America

Not looking good in the thirtyish years since this strip was drawn.

Why not have the EPA and also personal responsibility? The two need not be mutually exclusive.