As soon as teleporting was perfected for the military in a far corner of the galaxy, the first assignment for the new system was to send an agent to Earth to check out the source of incessant radio noise and strange video images alternately showing humans killing each other or pairing in strange ways often involving acrobatics that the far off aliens could not fathom. Mr. Fa’reye’s (a name quite impossible to pronounce for Earthlings) was selected as the agent for the mission. He was instructed to observe and provide a comprehensive report.
When Mr. Fa’reye’s arrived in Earth orbit, he was amazed to discover the incredible amount of junk that was floating around… his teleport capsule needed all of its computing power to dodge the obstacles. His first scan showed what he discovered were parliaments where people apparently went to discuss things which were subsequently mostly ignored by most other people. A lot of talk was about the environment and it seemed this was a subject that could actually make many of the two legged creatures in the parliaments quite passionate. They seemed to be saving their planet from some future catastrophe… They did not seem to realize that it was already happening. But, sure enough, they voted to spend a lot of money on future projects with doubtful outcome while very little if anything was being spent on mitigating the damage already being caused by their changing climate.
To Mr. Fa’reye’s’ amazement, people were also being duped by something they seemed to call hybrid cars which, apparently, they thought were not producing any harmful emissions. Power stations belching smoke as they produced the electricity for charging those hybrids were usually out of site and the people buying those cars did not seem to connect the smoke with their “emission free” vehicles.
On his last scan, he spotted a company making airplanes and what he discovered there was truly incredible on a world that seemed to be so hung up on protecting their environment.
Mr. Fa’reye’s completed his report and teleported himself back to where he came from. He then awaited with great anticipation the promotion he was sure to get in recognition of the truly incredible facts he had discovered.
Two weeks later he was summarily fired, the reason given was “unreliable agent”.
When the Galactic Intelligence Committee (GIC) had received Mr. Fa’reye’s’s report, they came together immediately to hear what he had to say. After all,
this was the first ever report they had from planet Earth. Their anticipation soon gave way to surprise and then incredulity. They had long ago solved the problems of sustainable development and even though they knew that Earth was not a particularly advanced place in the Galaxy, the gullibility of people buying so called zero emission vehicles and the audacity of politicians subsidizing such projects was difficult to believe.
But what really blew the fuses was Mr. Fa’reye’s’s description of the process to build the wing of a new aircraft type. The top and bottom skins of the new wings arrive from distant realms while the front spars actually come from the other side of the ocean. Sure enough, the rear spars also come from somewhere else, although that place was at least a bit nearer to the assembly location. The wing so made is then transported for completion to yet another factory before the whole caboodle heads South to be mated with the fuselage. Mr. Fa’reye’s quoted some obscure reason that sounded like “proportional workshare”, something that was totally incomprehensible to the business minded committee members. The impact on the environment of so much shuttling and shuffling of hardware did not seem to matter…
After a short discussion, the committee agreed that Mr. Fa’reye’s had made this up.
“Even Earthlings cannot be that silly!” –the Chairperson summed up the common view – “this agent is useless, fire him!”.
That was the end of Mr. Fa’reye’s career with the GIC. He read and re-read his report and in the end started to have his doubts whether what he had seen was in fact true. After all, on a planet so preoccupied with the environment could politics in fact distort things like this?
Even Earthlings cannot be that silly he sighed…
