Shownotes Transcript
You're listening to Comedy Central. America celebrates Earth Day. Only 363 shopping days until next Earth Day. Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio joined forces in Washington Saturday, celebrating the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. The celebration was held amidst a rock festival atmosphere. Except there was no rock, no festival, and as we all learned from the speakers, no atmosphere. We have to make the next 10 years the environment decade.
in America and around the world. We have to stand against the apologists for pollution, those who believe in the old politics of environmental irresponsibility. Inspiring words from a man whose 1992 bestseller Earth and the Balance now sits in landfills across the country. The crowd was also treated to the music of David Crosby, who was then treated to the sound of people heading over to the Smithsonian to see Archie Bunker's chair.
Leonardo DiCaprio's much-debated Bill Clinton interview also aired this weekend. The president took Leo on a tour of the dimly lit and romantic White House. We started a project here at the White House called the Greening of the White House. Just by changing the lighting in this whole building, we lowered our electric bills by $100,000 a year. After blowing his wow-wad early, DiCaprio scoured his journalist's handbook for other stinging retorts like, geez, and awesome, and...
Can a player get a table dance? The day after Thanksgiving, you feel stuffed. The day after Valentine's Day, loved or angry. And the day after Earth Day, you feel mildly embarrassed that you forgot yesterday was Earth Day. Our Sam Bee has another take. Planet Earth. We can't seem to do enough for it.
We celebrate it, clean it, we even featured Leo in an issue of Vanity Fair about it. And for all we do, how does Mother Earth treat us? With a human kill rate of 100%. Mother Nature is one ungrateful whore. Clearly the Earth hates our freedom, but try telling that to the blame humans first crowd.
Alright, so here I am at Earth Day talking to some stupid hippie about some stupid food. The Earth isn't doing anything bad. We're doing the bad things to the Earth. Okay, isn't it a little childish to talk about who started what when and who's doing what to whom? The point is we're in this war and we have to win it. You know what we're really psyched about this product? It's new from Stonyfield. It comes in several different flavors. There's strawberry banana. Should it taste like feet?
I love Mother Earth. Oh really? Yes I do. Well when you suckled at your mother's teat, did molten hot lava pour out into your mouth? We've got 5% of the population using 25% of the natural resources, polluting 30% of the earth, and so that's a failed system. Do you do push-ups? No I don't. People come out, we raise awareness, and we're being saved.
To win this war, we may need science. So I met with NASA climatologist Gavin Schmidt to find out how we can learn from our past mistakes. I'm just an average person without access to an earthquake ray or a Death Star. How can I join the fight against Earth? I really couldn't tell you. Statistically, aren't Americans more likely to get hit by lightning than attacked by terrorists?
I think that's true. Then can we afford not to have a war on lightning? It'd be difficult to do. Um, that's what they said about destroying the ozone layer, but score one for humans. Actually, the ozone layer is well on its way to recovery. Damn it! Fortunately, there is a way out. Today I announce a new plan to extend a human presence across our solar system. With human missions to Mars,
and to worlds beyond. Until we can leave this s*** box behind, Americans will need to make sacrifices. Even if that means touring around the country in a private jet, giving energy-guzzling PowerPoint presentations on some stupid crap, and releasing a movie about it. In the end, we all have to do what we can to make the planet more livable. I'm just keeping myself cool. It's a warm spring day. You don't have to be. We'll be right back.
When a news story falls through the cracks, our own Lewis Black catches it for a segment we call Back in Black. You can always tell it's Earth Day when the CO2 emissions from the world's smokestacks start paling in comparison to celebrity emissions telling us we can save the Earth if we start acting a little more like them.
Just ask Matt Damon, who contributed this tip to Oprah Winfrey's Earth Day special. I've got a great one for you. If your house is anything like mine... Stop. It's not. It's a lot smaller, and it doesn't have an Affleck-shaped dent in the couch. Oprah herself showed off her Earth Day spirit by wearing a sweater she accidentally washed with her money.
giving away Earth-friendly products to her audience. We're gonna bring out the bulbs so you can have a look. And you get a smart stroke. Ooh, a light bulb giveaway, huh? You really think that'll undo the environmental damage caused by this? Everybody get the cup!
Here on ABC, 2020 both documented and lived out mankind's excess by flying reporters to file live reports from six of the seven continents. Every second of every single day, thousands of trees are being cut down. In fact, in just the one minute that I've been talking, an area the size of 60 football fields has been wiped out. Then for God's sakes,
Your inane blather is raping the earth! Post Diane Sawyer talked to a scientist from Antarctica and found out it's cold there. You can step outside for a few seconds, but you certainly don't want to stand around for a minute or two. You get frostbitten very quickly at these temperatures. So is your pole thinning?
I'll tell you right now, if I go through the trouble of placing a satellite call just to hear Diane Sawyer's voice, she better not thin my pole. Still, my favorite Earth Day special had to be this. Pimp My Ride, a show devoted to creating the least efficient vehicles in human history, has the nerve to throw its own Earth Day celebration on Sunday.
You probably want to ask, "Matt, Mike, are there really any benefits to using biodiesel?" Hell yeah! This stuff reduces nasty diesel emissions by almost 80%. It ends acid rain, which I personally love, because I hate that . It's a shame cars don't run on cognitive dissonance.
Any other final thoughts? If everybody used recycled tissue even, you would have millions of trees still on the ground. I just want you to go now move to a cloth bag. Use less gasoline. There are kind of little things that you can do. Do something wonderful for your life and get rid of this junk. So there you have it. Advice on saving planet Earth from a bunch of people who couldn't even save planet Hollywood.
Now we saw President Bush in the great outdoors. He talked about how he loves owning his ranch in Texas. Clearly he's a friend of the environment, but who else is? As Matt Wallace recently found out, the Earth's best friend may well be the logging industry. For decades, children have been enchanted by Dr. Seuss' silly tales. From the cat in the hat and Horton Hears a Who, to later stories like the Lorax. I'll never forget the grim look on his face when he heisted himself and took leave of this mine. He's holding his butt.
He's heisting himself by the seat of his pants. He's holding his butt. But Terry Burkett, a concerned mother of two, says there's more to the Lorax than meets the eye. The Lorax is being used to present a very preservationist point of view that we are running out of trees. I had no idea.
Could the warm and fuzzy Lorax actually be a radical tree-hugger hell-bent on destroying the wood products industry? Burkitt says this is yet another example of moneyed special interests gone too far. There's a lot of money.
in the hands of environmental organizations and the wood products industry is basically busy going to work every day and they have not had the money to get their story out. Yes, with only billions in revenue to work with, mom-and-pop companies like Weyerhaeuser and International Paper have been backed into a corner.
So Burkitt drew on her experience as a mother and as an assistant plant manager for a wood flooring manufacturer to write a book that teaches children cutting down trees makes the forest happy.
She called it Truax. People in the wood products industry are environmentalists, and that's what I try to get across in Truax. Her book got picked up by a boutique indie publisher called the National Oak Flooring Manufacturers Association. And with nearly half a million copies in print, Truax is fast replacing Lorax in classrooms across America. I'm Truax the logger. I harvest these trees for ball bats and houses.
And things such as these. And the kids love it. Biodiversity. Will this still be there when the trees have been sown? But in any good wood products curriculum, reading materials must be supplemented with hands-on learning. Everything I'm showing you today is waterproof, okay? It's going to last your lifetime. It's an investment, but it'll last your lifetime.
Now when you get Venetian blinds, you're going to want to match the blinds to the floor and you don't want them to contrast, okay? And remember, the blinds match the floor. Say that. The blinds match the floor. Kids seem to really appreciate the wood products industry. So why didn't Dr. Seuss? I put that question to a Seuss spokesman. So you speak for the trees, correct? I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees.
Well, I have a copy of your most recent tax return, and it seems to me you do more than just speak for the trees. I'm also in charge of the brown barbaloots who played in the shade in their barbaloot suits. How do you respond to allegations that you're just a hired gun who will work for any organization that will pay you? You're nothing more than a two-bit shill. Listen to me, you motherf***er!
I am the Lorax. I don't have to answer these f***ing questions. This interview's over. Where are you going? This is f***ing bulls***. Who else do you work for? For me, newsman. Friday, April 22nd, was Earth Day. And that, of course, oddly enough, April 22nd, is the day in 2012 on which the Earth will end. You heard it here first. President Bush marked the event by riding his airborne SUV to Tennessee to visit the Great Smoky Mountains, ironically our nation's most polluted national park.
But he wound up stuck on the tarmac due to a sudden burst of hail and thunderstorms because the earth hates him so much. But the president soldiered on with his speech, making a slight adjustment in tense. In the park, had I been there, I'd have reminded people today's Earth Day. Since I'm not there, let me skip right ahead to talking about our good friend, the high sulfur coal plant.
We didn't create this earth, but we have an obligation to protect it. One of the interesting things about our nation is that since 1970, the air is cleaner and the water is more pure and we're using our land better and our economy has grown a lot. And then I showed up. The whole thing went to... I know, love. The whole thing went...
Now, if you didn't notice, Majority Leader Bill Frist accompanied the President on the trip. Now, I'm going to replay some of the tape. Keep your eye on Senator Bill Frist as the President speaks. We didn't create this earth, but we have an obligation to protect it. One of the interesting things about our nation is that since 1970, the air is cleaner and the water is more pure and we're using our land better. You know, I was not there. Obviously, I wasn't there. And I was only watching this on videotape, so I am not really qualified to give a diagnosis, but...
It seems to me that Bill Frist was in a persistent vegetative state. I don't know that to be true. Of course, the biggest... Oh, never give an audience candy. The biggest environmental battle these days is over the proposal to drill in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
And those opposed to it are mobilized. And by mobilized, I mean armed with meringue. This weekend, in front of the Capitol Ice Cream, moguls Ben and Jerry created the world's largest Baked Alaska, presumably to raise awareness about the En-Wire legislation now moving through Congress. There you have it. The state of liberal opposition in this country. We're very angry! Would anyone care for ice cream?
Saturday was the 36th annual Earth Day. Who better to celebrate the Earth than the man who owns it? President George W. Bush visited a clean energy research consortium in Sacramento with a message of hope. This nation does not have to choose between a strong economy and a clean environment. You'll get neither and like it. Now eat up and get out. Of course, no Earth Day speech would be complete without mentioning the administration's favorite environmental pipe dream.
I believe that today's children will one day take their driver's test in a hydrogen-powered, pollution-free car. And I believe teenagers will borrow those hydrogen cars from their future parents without permission and stay out past space curfew, robo-necking with their cyborg boyfriends. I thought of that when I was on a bicycle.
And aside from the president, well, as best we can tell, only one other place acknowledged Earth Day, the Cartoon Network's Boomerang Channel, which aired 13 lost episodes of the early 90s pro-environment cartoon Captain Planet and the Planeteers. How many things in your home are made from trees? Furniture, books, baseball bats, even your house's floors and framing. Gee, why didn't that ever take off? Mommy, I want to be the superhero that tells us what our house is made of.
Don't taunt me. And what was Earth doing in the run-up to Earth Day? Well, over the last week it gave us volcano erupting in Peru, earthquakes in Tibet, Indonesia and Japan, freak tornadoes in America and the Philippines, floods in Hungary, Romania, Malaysia and Kenya, wildfires in Colorado, and a Category 5 super cyclone about to destroy Darwin, Australia. So, um, Earth, could you meet me over at Camera 3, please?
Hey, Earth, how's it going? Um, so I guess kissing your ass doesn't work. We call you beautiful, precious, mother, gave you your own day, just like veterans and groundhogs. Even named you Planet of the Year in 1988, even though by any objective estimation, that was Neptune's year. We tried to make nice, and what do you do? Not only do you kill us in a thousand different ways, but when we raise your temperature just a degree, one degree,
degree. You're all, oh, it's so hot. Oh, your eyes catch it. You're a pussy. I have news for you, Earth. You ain't the only rock in the neighborhood. You know what I'm saying? We got pictures. You seen the moon? Very nice. We've been there several times. You know, they've already got a golf course. Then there's Mars. A little red, a little rocky. It's a perfect fixer-upper. We got Titan out by Saturn. Very similar atmosphere to you. Other than it's 290 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. But we're working on space jackets.
We're through sucking up to you, home planet. You want to fight? Bring it on, bitch. Because at this moment, I am declaring April 25th the Earth Day. That's right. What are you going to do about that? That's going to be a day to drive your half mile per hour gallon humskalade while spraying Aquanet at baby seals. You know why? Because we're not going out, baby. We're not going out like the dinosaurs, my brother.
Without us, you're nothing but a billion-year-old, self-sustaining, self-regulating, organic Eden in complete harmony with itself. So f*** you.