2011-06-17
Explanation
This comic presents a graph plotting "Number of People Who View Environmentalism as an Ethical Concern" on the y-axis against "Time" on the x-axis. The curve rises sharply, peaks, and then drops precipitously. An arrow points to the peak with the label "Pollutant-Dumping Tube to Space Invented."
The joke is a cynical observation about human nature and ethical commitments. The comic suggests that people only care about environmentalism when there is no easy alternative -- once a technological fix (a tube that dumps pollutants into space) is invented, nearly everyone abandons environmentalism as a moral stance. The implication is that most people'''s environmental ethics are not deeply held principles but rather pragmatic concerns driven by the lack of a convenient workaround.
The votey panel extends the joke: someone asks "What about the rainforests?" and receives the reply "Put '''em in the space tube?" This underscores the absurdity of the space-tube solution by showing that once people have a magic fix for pollution, they try to apply it nonsensically to every environmental issue, even ones that have nothing to do with pollutants.