GLOBE & MAIL : Could sly little green men be the top-secret solution to our climate conundrum?
By ROY MACGREGOR
Thursday, March 1, 2007 – Page A2
We have heard so much about "thinking outside the box" that we cringe every time someone uses the expression.
But how about "thinking outside the planet?"
This is the message 83-year-old Paul Hellyer brought this week to the Ottawa Citizen, claiming that the salvation of Earth may lie in the hands of those who, well, may not even have hands. . . .
Whatever, the former federal cabinet minister -- who ran unsuccessfully for the leadership of both major national parties before forming his own party -- has for some time been an open believer in such matters as extraterrestrials and unidentified flying objects and flying saucers.
He now says the advanced technology that allows for these alien visitors to drop in on Earth every now and then is what could, ultimately, "save our planet" from the almost certain destruction coming from global warming.
What he is demanding is full public disclosure of all technical knowledge gathered during covered-up visits and UFO crashes -- the most famous of which allegedly took place in Roswell, N.M., in 1947.
Herein, he believes, lies the secret to a viable alternative to fossil fuels.
Hellyer may well be on to something. The intellectuals and cultural snobs among us who never missed an episode of Married with Children will recall that Al Bundy once caught three little green aliens sneaking into his bedroom to steal his dirty socks.
No one believed him, of course, but it turned out that the aliens had come from the distant planet Philydion and that Al Bundy's stinking socks were chock full of mizzoozzoo -- "fuel" in the Philydion language.
But Paul Hellyer isn't after a laugh track. He's completely serious about this.
The former defence minister -- the man who brought unification to the armed forces -- wants governments and military from around this troubled world to "come clean on what they know."
And they must, surely, know something. Spacecraft have been sighted in North American air space at least since Oct. 12, 1796, the day Simeon Perkins noted in his diary that 15 strange ships had been seen floating above the Bay of Fundy. Each year, hundreds of sightings are reported in Canada alone, and, according to some polls, more than half of Canadians believe that Earth has been visited by extraterrestrials at some time.
And they didn't get here by paddling.
"Climate change is the No. 1 problem facing the world today," Hellyer told the paper. "I'm not discouraging anyone from being green conscious, but I would like to see what technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation . . . that could be a way to save our planet."
That new fuel source, he speculates, could be whatever it is that propels spaceships from one solar system to the other. He certainly doesn't think it would be Al Bundy's dirty socks, but it must be something.
Hellyer believes there is now undeniable evidence that alien visitors have come to Earth -- a new documentary called Fastwalkers argues precisely this point -- and various governments are almost certain to have had an opportunity to study some of this evidence and figure out how they managed to travel so far, so fast, so cheaply.
"Some of us suspect they know quite a lot," he said. "And it might be enough to save our planet if applied quickly enough."
It is rather an easy thing to make fun of such thinking, but it just may turn out there is a space connection to a future solution -- if, in fact, one is available.
The United States declared at the start of the 1960s that it would put a man on the moon before the decade was out, and did so.
The moon mission, like the Manhattan Project that produced the atomic bomb, proved that if there is enough determination, and enough money, things that seem impossible can be made possible.
It may also be that the answer lies not in some spaceship making its way to Earth from the distant planet of Philydion, but in a bus crawling across Canada these days and scheduled to reach Ottawa tomorrow.
David Suzuki isn't alien -- though he's certainly been painted far worse along his month-long journey -- but he is offering solutions that have nothing to do with dirty socks or guesswork from a purported 1947 crash in the desert.
His "If you were prime minister . . . " tour is all about getting people involved. He believes, as so many of us do, that the politicians are running well behind the people on the issue of global warming and what to do about it.
"Frankly," Suzuki wrote in a column this week, "some of the 10-year-olds are better able to articulate what a low-carbon future would look like than most politicians in the House can muster."
There are answers out there, Suzuki says, but they won't come from outer space.
They are found in inner space.
Inside each and every one of us.
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