Punxsutawney Phil came out of his hole today, and wouldn’t you know it, the sun was out and he saw his shadow, terrifying the little thing so badly that he ran right back into his hole, signifying six more weeks of winter. Of course he didn’t acutally run back into his hole, having just been poked and prodded by the media to get him out of the hole in the first place. And by poked and prodded I mean physically yanked and held aloft.
Why they need him to come out in order to see if the sun is shining is beyond me, but I guess that’s just how they do it down there, although honestly, with all the camera flashes going off, I think poor Phil would have seen his shadow in the middle of a blizzard. But the important thing is that he saw his shadow there on the hallowed grounds of Gobbler’s Knob, which I would make a joke about, but cannot, as this is a family blog.
In the middle of the ceremony there was a shout from the crowd, as some young gentlemen called out to the officiants, “It already feels like spring!” My interrupting little friend, you have a point. It has felt like spring for a lot of this winter, so if we’re getting six more weeks of this, then what happens when actual spring arrives? Will it turn to summer in April, or have winter and spring just traded places and we will get three feet of snow in May?
I know that there are people out there who doubt that global warming exists, and to you people I say, there is something wrong with you. Perhaps you have faulty heat sensors in your bodies, and if someone turned off all the cold water in your shower as a joke you would calmly stand there, blissfully unaware of your boiling skin. Maybe you are stubborn, and don’t want to admit things that are obvious to everyone else on the planet. Or perhaps you are just in denial. Look, I don’t want all human life on the planet to die out any more than you do! But we have to face the facts. Punxsutawney Phil needs us to face the facts.
The real question is not whether our weather patterns are changing (because they are), but whether or not we humans have anything to do with it. I mean, weather patterns have been changing and evolving for billions of years (or, if you don’t believe in global warming, thousands of years), and they are doing so again, rather dramatically it would seem. But is it our fault?
Honestly, I don’t know. But if you told me that I was getting so fat that I was going to die soon, and it might be genetic, or it might be the four Big Macs I ate every day, I would probably give up the cheeseburgers, just to be on the safe side. So if there is even a remote chance that we humans are causing this “weirding of weather” with our pollution and corporate greed run wild, then I say we ought to stop it for a while and see what happens. Right? What good is a thriving economy with no planet to live on? We have a responsibilty as a people to at least try something to save ourselves, even if it doesn’t work and it was never our fault to begin with. Otherwise, all of our winters up north will be 60 degrees and rainy. And Punxsutawney Phil does not like that.
P.S. It also does not look like he likes being yanked out of his hole in front of thousands of people, but that’s more of a PETA issue.