A full-blown climate emergency is upon us. As a good steward of the earth, I do everything I can to prevent further damage to our home. I am a strict vegan, I use metal straws when drinking from entirely plastic cups and I scowl at people who don’t use reusable bags like mine. It’s hard work, but it’s deeply worth it to me to feel better than everyone, and also save the earth.

But … I want to do more. I see these people around me, uncompassionate and ignorant, driving cars to their homes without solar panels and eating hamburgers. No matter how much I scowl, they just don’t change their ways, claiming my lifestyle is “too expensive” — can you imagine such conceit?

I was always skeptical of the poor. The way they “didn’t have money” made me wonder if they even wanted it at all. It soon became clear that they were the problem behind our dying planet, purposefully slacking and purchasing cheap environmentally harmful products just to get into their gas-powered cars and go to work at a polluting job. The continuous talk of finances is also a bit tacky. To place such importance on money is frankly unprogressive. 

Good men like Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, do what they can to help these lost souls, giving them jobs and a purpose in life. This generous owner of a small, family-run business is just doing his duty in helping his serf — I mean, valued employees. Yet they only turn around and complain. Talk of unions and “harmful” working conditions discourage other philanthropists from even helping at all, and frankly, I sympathize with him. It is incredibly rude to look a gift drone in the surveillance camera. 

So, what am I going to do? The mission statement of my cause is this: poor people are the cause of climate change, and it’s time we put them to work.

I work with many other people in the upper class to make this happen. We call ourselves the GOP, Gentlefolk Opposing the Poor. We host country club events raising money to build human-sized treadmills underground to power our cities with clean, human-made energy. We contact local farmers and give them funds, as we plan on feeding our unpaid laborers only the best and most organic soylent (and nothing else). The sheer satisfaction their brains will experience knowing that they are saving the planet will be payment enough and also make up for the vitamin deficiency, dehydration and inevitable death by exhaustion. 

This is the key to saving our planet, our only beloved home. Our crucial values of tolerance, open-mindedness, and compassion will allow us to restore countless once-thriving ecosystems. Join us to save planet Earth.

Except if you’re poor — then you’d better take up jogging.