Cheese Please

OK, OK, I'm engaged now. To one degree or another, I feel like I've always been environmentally conscious.

For example, I proudly displayed a Greenpeace bumper sticker on my car in High School. You did, unfortunately, have to look close to see it because the sticker ended up clouded and half-obscured by particulate matter spewed from the exhaust of my vintage Datsun 280ZX. I also agitated to family and friends about "Dolphin Safe Tuna." This was a particularly easy topic to stay true to because I didn't like the taste of tuna.

In more recent years I intently watched An Inconvenient Truth and use a reel mower along with, most absurdly, a manual core aerator. I could argue that I was, at least, paying close attention. But although it's alarming when ice sheets the size of Connecticut break off from Antarctica and vast numbers of amphibians are threatened with extinction, I can't say that I was REALLY engaged until now. In fact, I'm beyond engaged; I'm enraged.

I recently learned that global warming is starting to affect cheese production. That's dirty pool. That's a punch in the gut. That's a kick in the crotch. That's serious business. Cheese is important enough to me to rate a spot on my personal list of Seven Wonders of the World. (Bicycles are on there too, but that's a topic for a different day.) In the past, I have attempted to frame my gestalt of cheese by saying, quite simply:

I find it difficult to imagine a world without cheese.

It was of significant, though not complete, comfort that I didn't have to.

But now I do.

But now I do?

But now I do!

Judging from the consumption patterns, this isn't a fringe issue. By the way, how do people feel about the fact that California is on the brink of overtaking Wisconsin in terms of cheese production? Personally, I'm troubled. Hopefully, Wisconsin can take consolation in being on the other side of a comparable geographic-culinary identity disorder since they produce more sauerkraut than Germany.

I know the existential powers of cheese have been recognized by others more esteemed than myself as illustrated in the following quote by Charles de Gaulle:

How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?

I submit that even in his moments of darkest deepest despair, he surely didn't allow himself the terrifying possibility of governing a nation with none...