Verbal Cannons
To be taken seriously, sometimes you have to be funny. This can be challenging in the environmental world, in which issues are often weighty or technical.
Not surprisingly, Internet research found that there isn’t much environmental humor out there. To make matters worse, I discovered that my search phrase “green jokes” was not appropriate. (For those like me who didn’t know, green jokes are saucy sexual jokes.) Luckily, Gerald Rich, PE, MBA, BFD (www.wcnet.org/~envsoft), has taken the time to collect a few environmental side-stitchers that can be told.
So just in case you’re stuck in a boring meeting, here are a few verbal cannons you can fire to liven things up. And if you have your own stash of ticklers, be sure to send them our way.

Basic Laws
First law of environmental protection: Species are protected only after they are hopelessly depleted.
Second law of environmental protection: The most efficient way to dispose of toxic waste is to reclassify it as non-toxic.
For every action there is an opposing criticism.
Bad regulations are more likely to be supplemented than repealed.
The fact that you do not know the answer does not mean that a consultant does.

Slogan of the Week
Remember — Only You Can Prevent Forests.

Groaners
Two turkey vultures are boarding a commercial airline. They’ve each brought with them a dead raccoon. While they’re in line at the gate, a flight attendant offers to check the raccoons, but the vultures reply, “No thanks, they’re carrion”.
A scientist was complaining to a fellow scientist that his fruit flies had never mated in the laboratory’s glass enclosure. The visiting scientist confided that he had experienced a similar problem at his lab. He said that fruit flies mate only while crawling on the glass walls of the enclosure. “Untreated glass is too slick,” he told his colleague, “but I have just the remedy.” He asked for table salt, some flour, and a little water. Then he prepared a paste and brushed it lightly on the glass walls. Immediately, the flies began crawling everywhere. “My problem is solved,” exclaimed the first scientist. “If only I had known flies need monosodium glue to mate!”

Inquiries
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
Why do they call it the Department of the Interior when they are in charge of everything outdoors?
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to see it, do the other trees still make fun of it?

If Scientists Wrote Nursery Rhymes
Jack and Jill: A two-person research team proceeded toward the apex of a protruding geologic formation, their purpose being procurement of a sample of fluid hydride of oxygen using an adequate vessel, exact size unspecified. One of the two precipitantly descended, sustaining severe fractural damage to the frontal cranial portion of his anatomy. Subsequently, the second member of the team performed a self-rotational translation oriented in the direction taken by the first member.

Environmental humor wouldn’t be complete without at least one Dan Quayle quotation: “It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.”