Be Afraid. Fucking Afraid.

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, if you can even call it that. I prefer to call it a remnant of the world's pre-monotheist past, a much better time when the natural world dictated the supernatural world, before it was hijacked by crusdading hypocrites and resource aggregators. Plus, the candy. Lots of it, and no hypocritical parents to complain about your teeth or your nervous system. (They have drugs of their own, after all.)

But Halloween's visceral impact has been lost in a steady, profitable stream of senses-numbing horrorcore, whether it's called Saw, Grand Theft Auto or Katie Couric. Even the war in Iraq, something that should keep us all awake at night, is submerged beneath a hefty stream of simulation and propaganda. We used to have hundreds of embedded reporters (what's in a name, indeed), now we have less than ten. Unless you feel like digging deep into the internet (and catching heat from the Bush administration's Total Information Awareness dragnet), you're not going to find any quality reportage, especially with visuals. It used to be we had taped beheadings of American and other victims of this pointless war; now we watch them for fun at the malls and give the Saw and Hostel franchises our hard-earned cash and credit.

So what's there to be afraid of? Global annihilation, in two words. At least as we understand it, locked in our meaning systems that define Earth as a calm, stable environment which God (pick one, any one) placed here strictly for our ease, comfort and capitalization. The truth is less self-absorbed than that: The planet will survive long after we have annihilated ourselves. So what is left is the terror-inducing proposition that we are digging our own graves, and building the perfect climate storm that will force billions of us into them. Unless we make some bold moves and make them now, we're totally fucked. Fucked like Mark Foley.

Not convinced? Crawl out of your hole. According to the recent reports of Nicholas Stern, publicized with a dash of poetic justice on Halloween by the righteous UK Guardian, we're on track to inherit floods, droughts, plagues and atmospheric horrors the likes of which would make disaster cinema producers wet their Depends. It gets worse: According to the former chief economist at the World Bank, we're also on tap to permanently lose 20 percent of our global output, trillions of dollars, because we're too godammn greedy to spend now and save later.

The numbers Stern provides are scary as hell, if hell really existed. It will soon enough. Suck on Stern's stats:

1) 6C is a "plausible" estimate of how much world temperatures could rise by the end of the century if greenhouse gas emissions are unchecked 2) 40 percent of the world's species would face extinction if temperatures rise by 2C 3) 200 million people are at risk of being driven from their homes by flood or drought by 2050 4) 200 million more people could be exposed to hunger if world temperatures rise by 2C 5) 550 million more people could be at risk of hunger if world temperatures rise by 3C 6) One-twentieth of the world's population is threatened by floods from melting glaciers 7) Four billion people could suffer from water shortage if temperatures rise by 2C

There are more, of course, but how much data do you need to realize, on Halloween of all days, that planet Earth is on a collision course with environmental crisis that will forever change the way we look at our lives, what will be left of them? Close your eyes and picture the ravages of Katrina. Poor people stranded on their roofs. Bodies and garbage swept into a spiraling mess out into the ocean, whose acidity in increasing by the day. Cities like New York and London, submerged. Food shortages, riot police, public executions. Pick a post-crisis scenario and explode it into a Hollywood nightmare. We won't need post-apocalypse games to glimpse total chaos. All we will need to do, unless we're part of a wealthy class squired safely away, is walk outside, hopefully armed. I have a baby on the way. Do not think for a second that I'm fucking around here. This shit scares me so hard my balls tingle even when I don't want them to. And that's not a good feeling.

Stern is on his way, with Al Gore in tow, to the hardheaded, dumb-as-dirt United States in hopes that he can smack us awake with science and research. What a riot. He will arrive in time to find that most of us could care less, drowning as we are in midterm sex scandals, YouTube/Google jackoffery, atmosphere-assassinating SUVs. I mean, the Bush administration just dropped charges against Chevron, arguing that "It is not in the public interest to spend federal dollars pursuing claims that have little or no chance of success." Now that's the Bush can-do spirit we all know and love!

No, over here in the United States, we don't like to let go of an obsession (propagandists call it "cut-and-run") until the reaper is literally at the door. We waited on the slavery problem until we had a Civil War that cost us well over a million casualties. We waited on Vietnam until the bodies filled the Mekong. And we're waiting on Iraq until the fact-challenged political theorists at PNAC and AEI come out and explain that they were high the whole time they dreamt up this latest colonial disgrace.

Same tragicomedy here. American necks and profiteers want to see oceans rising and cities swallowed before they change course. People who watch TV "news" (why?) want to hear from a douchebag who doesn't believe the hype, who can comfort them and tell them that they don't have to change a thing. They are perfect as they are, just as their Gods created them. And if the world comes to an end? Well, that's the "trick" part of Halloween no one sees anymore. For thousands of years, we've been eating every treat we can find. Now it's time to receive nothing but environmental horror when we knock on the door, wondering if we'll get shot for eyeing the fridge.