July 28th, 2011
Environmental whackos up to their smelly tricks again
Last year, the Siesta Club, Bizarreville’s most radical environmental activist group, filed a lawsuit challenging the amount of pollution emitted from 28 Bizarreville manufacturing plants. The suit alleges that the pollutants have done and continue to do significant harm to humans, animals, and plant life. They cite a study conducted by the 6th grade Boinkertown Elementary School which particularly focused on the ill-effects of sulfur dioxide. The students conducted a lab experiment showing high levels of SO2 made various species of weeds turn brown and made some grasshoppers act crazy. “Plus it smelled pretty bad…like someone cut one,” reported one of the science students.
The Siesta Club is trying to force the 28 factories to install high-tech pollution control equipment to settle the suit. “It doesn’t matter what it costs,” said Dr. J. Perch Plumpsnark, executive director of the Club. “You can’t put a price tag on health. What’s the price of poor old Rover developing a life-long hacking cough? What’s the price of seeing leaves on perfectly good weeds with nasty brown edges everywhere you look? What about poor grampaw suffering from emphysema after 60 years of chain-smoking, now unable to take a full breath because of these pollutants? Priceless…that’s what.”
A spokesman for the Bizarreville Manufacturers Association responded to the suit by saying that the amount of SO2 emitted by these factories was equivalent to putting an eyedrop of roach urine in the Indian Ocean. He said the cost of installing the control equipment would be somewhere north of $65 billion, would increase operating costs 18%, result in 4 million additional tons of waste entering landfills, and…incidently…have a deteriorating effect on the globe’s ozone layer. “These whackos cannot be serious about this lawsuit,” the BMA spokesman said. “I know that a lot of the club members are chronic dope-smokers, but it looks like someone has been putting some pretty nasty stuff in their bongs lately.”
The BMS asked for the case to be summarily dismissed. But the District Judge refused to grant a dismissal. Risking a contempt of court filing, the BMA spokesman responded, “Looks like the Judge has been toking off that same bong.”
Disclaimer: all stories in Bizarreville are fiction, even the enviro-whacko ones.
