Can Wheaties Solve Our Climate and Big Tech Problems?

Whenever I write something, I always put it through The Wheaties Test.

The Wheaties Test is simply that I never post something until I let it sit overnight first. If I still agree with it when I'm eating my morning Wheaties, then it gets posted. If my snark is too much even for me, then it gets canned. As context, for every one of my posts there are at least 5 that never make it past tomorrow's breakfast.

As many of you know, I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about the climate and how to help redirect us from, well, whatever trajectory it is we're on. I've spent 22+ years in cleantech on the front lines of this world, so it's something I care about. I believe that climate change is real and that we need to handle it directly and transparently, and I also believe the current Climate Panic Movement has been and continues to be a complete disaster. The only thing climate panic has produced is scared children and impotent climate policies.

So before I divulge my pre-Wheaties brainstorm, let me set the stage.

We all know that many climate crusaders want to blame Big Oil for everything. Check.

We know that climate change attribution has blamed everything from fat horses to lousy grades to poverty to racism on manmade climate change; Columbia University's Law School has even spearheaded the legal constructs with which we can go hunt down and prosecute egregious CO2 emitters based on their contributions to climate damage. Check.

We know that politicians love penalizing everyone for carbon emissions; the carbon tax is one way that can fund the breathless number of Save The Planet projects that make them look good. Double-check.

We also know that Big Tech/Social Media now controls much of what we all read and hear about pretty much every subject: elections, politicians, the truth, fake truth, fake news, which politial party is right, which political party is wrong and countless others. FaceTwitGoogTube now control much of the information we read, and they censor what they don't want us to see and propogate what they do. Check-mate.

We know that, last week, Google/YouTube announced they would no longer allow climate content that went against the established scientific consensus to appear next to advertisements that supported it, because advertisers just don't want it.

One could make the argument that since FaceTwitGoogTube now controls messages and decides which of us gets to see what about the climate - coupled with their enormous market presences - they actually own the climate discussion. And because they own the messaging and discussions that billions of people will see, let's give them that ownership, shall we?

Which brings me to my awesome Save The Planet idea:

The Big Tech Climate Destruction Tax!

Since FTGT now owns the climate discussion, we can now just tax the bejesus out of them to fix it.

Think about it for a second. FTGT owns server farms all over the world using millions of computers and gigawatts of energy, all supplied by fossil fuels. Their customers (namely, us) use computers and phones and cars and all other things to access the products they've designed to maximize our addiction, which increases their fossil fuel usage further. They control the machinery, the product, the messaging, all while producing things we're addicted to that make them billions in profit. If you include us in the picture - and why wouldn't you since we're addicted to the stuff they make? - FTGT's combined CO2 footprint is one of the world's biggest. And since they now own the problem, shouldn't we require them to own the solution?

Every FTGT account would be taxed. Every like, post, view, tweet, retweet would be taxed. Every new account would be hit with a double-tax-service-establishment-fee, just like when we sign up for any online service. The profits they make from climate-related advertisements or content (the ones they allow, anyway) would be capital-gains-type taxed. And since we are a big part of the problem, every one of us would also be taxed: every log-in, every post, every like, everthing. Now instead of FTGT running amok and controlling everything we see, we could turn it into a Big Tech Tax-a-palooza!

Now I can almost hear all those Big Taxers/Big Vaxers swooning with anticipation, but let me finish the story. All those taxes would be collected and put into a Big Climate Repair Fund, but since the monies are penalties for Big Tech's egregious intrusion into and control over our lives and their contribution to rising global CO2 levels, they can't be used to fund more tech stuff. Anything that adds CO2 into the atmosphere would not be eligible, which means that only natural solutions could be deployed with this money. Trees, natural agrofarming, carpooling, peatmoss restoration, conservation, reforestation, and the hundreds of other natural solutions that directly lower CO2 levels would be eligible. I know you want to fund your shiny new CO2-adding Tesla with our Big Tech Climate Penalty Fund, but no can do, amigo!

Think what would happen once politicians figured out how to not make enemies of the Big Tech companies who elected them. FTGT would crack down on new accounts immediately, lest they have to be penalized; goodbye fake bot farms! They would limit people's like/view/retweet capabilities, lest they have to pay for each time some piece of factual fiction gets promoted. They could employ more censors or less censors - now, who cares if they do? - to try and manage their tax as well as their CO2 footprints. Overall, their usage and revenues and content and taxes would be transparent and available to our Big Benevolent Internal Revenue Service!

We, of course, would quit signing up for those temporary-accounts-that-I-sign-up-for-now-that-lets-me-buy-those-shoes-that-I-can-delete-later because, yay verily, we would get taxed for them. And now I probably won't retweet that gosh-darn-cute-puppy-kissing-that-gosh-darn-cute-kitty meme that's all the rage. Is that resend really worth the five bucks it's going to cost me?

Snarkiness aside, it's a pretty darn good idea isn't it?

Don't answer now. Just let it percolate overnight, and read it with tomorrow's Wheaties.