Terraforming

Once upon a time, in a galaxy not so far away (but you had to drive there anyway because there were no sidewalks) Goldilocks, a dumerican, was out cruising in her SUV.


Goldilocks was looking for a place to call home and during her gas guzzling cruise, she came across three planets.

The first planet had a sign outside that read, "Venus". After stopping at a gas station, Goldilocks cruised all around Venus, but decided it wasn't a suitable place to call home, "This atmosphere is too thick!" she exclaimed.

Next, Goldilocks came to a planet with a sign reading, "Mars". Goldilocks filled up her gas tank again, and went cruising, the dumerican way. But, for the second time, she decided this planet would not work, "This place has NO atmosphere!" she lamented.

After another stop at the gas station, Goldilocks decided to try out the third little nugget orbiting around. It's sign read, "Earth" and Goldilocks knew she was home. The planet had SUVs everywhere and a perfect atmosphere.

Goldilocks quickly set herself up with an unsustainable lifestyle and issued all kinds of unsecured, personal debt- the dumerican dream! Most of this unsecured debt was used to purchase gasoline, while simultaneously complaining about gasoline prices.

***

Goldilocks didn't know it, but the Earthlings arranged their planet in political jurisdictions known as countries. At one time there was a sole country known as a "superpower". This country was called "Dumerica" and it's people lived to consume, showing no inclination toward rational efficiencies.

Eventually, Dumerica "exported" it's "culture" to the other countries. As Goldilocks' time on Earth continued, she started to notice the atmosphere was getting thicker, and trapping heat. It's atmosphere was eventually going to wind up like that of Venus, which was uninhabitable.

***

Goldilocks could still remember Venus and Mars, and thats when she had an idea:

"What if we put strip malls and low density, automobile-centric developments on Mars?" she wondered. "Wouldn't this invite Dumericans and their SUVs to drive around that planet too? Wouldn't it's atmosphere thicken, terraforming it, and wouldn't it become an ideal place for the SUV lifestyle? Much as Earth once was?"

Goldilocks was able to ignore the lost productivity of the Dumericans, as they lined their SUVs up burning gasoline and thickening the atmosphere while travelling nowhere.

She was also able to ignore things like water runoff from all of the pavement the Dumericans put down to accomodate this inefficient mode of transportation.

And, finally, she ignored the sedentary nature of the Dumericans- rolling around in their SUVs required little personal energy. As the Dumericans ballooned in size and faced an obesity epidemic, all that really mattered was more consumption.

Goldilocks contacted the new office of interplanetary sprawl at Wal-Mart. The two of them stopped by the gas station, then headed on up to Mars to begin construction of the first strip mall.

THE END