The Perpetual Pismo Paradox

By John Summer

Sep 16, 2026

Oh, where to turn?

We’ve been having discussions lately about tar seeping up on our beaches. That’s what the Chumash called “pismo”… and they used it to waterproof their boats for centuries.

It occurs naturally.

And it has forever.

I recall having to clean off my Adidas after an innocent jog along Haskell’s Beach in the ‘70s. What the heck? Oil spill? Nope. Pismo.

This was around the time when we began to be asked: “Paper, or plastic?” at the grocery store. Trees, or tars? Oh, and not too much after the movie “The Graduate” with Dustin Hoffman, who was counseled that the future was “Just one word… plastics.”

Plastics made from petroleum.

Like Pismo tar.

(By the way, fun factoid, the Dustin Hoffman character, Benjamin, drove through the Gaviota tunnel on the 101, supposedly heading south to Santa Barbara to save/prevent his beloved Elaine from getting married… The tunnel only goes north.)

Anyway, I’ve been in a constant state of environmental confusion ever since.

You see, we were alerted to the impending doom of “man-made climate change” during that time. First, there was this publication called “The Whole Earth Catalog” that announced to the world that global cooling would freeze us like dinosaurs because of our immoral use of fossil fuels (which, ironically, are credited to a pile of rotting carcases of dead dinosaurs and their flora and fauna brethren, lo those many millennia ago during the “ice age”).

But that didn’t happen. And so we had to change course pretty quickly with creepy dudes like failed presidential candidate Al Gore, who “invented the internet” and who glommed on to the concept that, no, the climate wasn’t cooling… it was actually warming, and at an appalling rate, according to his “computer models.”

He got a Nobel Peace Prize for that (usually an indication that the recipient didn’t deserve it, like Obama… but I digress).

Regardless, we freaked.

And so enter the world of “environmental consciousness.”

What this meant, is that we needed to heed all guidance from those “experts” (kind of like the evil Dr. Fauci, you know, the guy who almost single-handedly wrecked our country with his so-called expertise in “science”? He should have received a Nobel too!) …

So, we relied on those “experts” anointed to council us on how to use, or not, our resources to prevent our butts from being boiled to death by the climate, (instead of frozen), that resulted from the horrors of actually trying to be a human and live in a world that we were never intended to inhabit unless we gave ourselves up to the flora and fauna that deserved to live more than we did.

There, I think I summed it up pretty good.

So here’s where we’ve come to presently. Follow the bouncing environmental ball.

Let’s just assume, for the sake of discussion, that I need to waterproof my old wooden outrigger canoe made from a tree that also makes paper bags to replace the oil-based plastic non-biodegradable ones that choke turtles that replaced the paper ones that destroyed the forests that are home for protected flora and fauna.

Otherwise, how will I paddle out to the oil platforms that have formed natural reefs for all the fish I can catch that spawn up the rivers that flow into the ocean because of the delta smelt, instead of the water being retained in reservoirs that humans need to have for drinking water and putting out the fires from the forests that haven’t been cleared because of spotted owls nesting and.... oh, the dilemma!

And by the way part deux, I can’t breathe because of the sand blowing off the dunes that are blamed on the four-wheelers even though the Chumash didn’t have them when the Nipomo Mesa was formed a millennium ago from blowing sand from the beaches.... wait for it.... the very beaches that are filled with tar, the “pismo” that had stained my Adidas that uses petroleum based components that were made in China that uses slave labor and has zero environmental sensitivity and just goes about creating most of the so called “man-made” pollution that changes the climate and forces me to use a vile oil-based solvent to clean them.

Otherwise I’d have to throw them away, thereby causing further pollution and, oh by the way part trois, causing me to have to buy another pair from China that continues the destruction that disgusting mankind has perpetrated upon the innocent natural world.

We’ve spent trillions trying to stop the climate change bogey man. You know, “environmental justice”? To no avail. And to our lifestyle detriment and budgets (that “cost of living” thing).

Feel-good failure to the max.

And whose fault is that? Well, who’s been in charge in California for the past 30-plus years besides a few impotent Republican governors?

Plus, we can’t build more clean, highly sustainable and affordable new nuclear energy plants because the aging hippies still cringe from the Three Mile Island burp that formed a nation of anti-nukers who chanted and strummed guitars around Diablo Canyon in the late ‘70s and continue to this day under the misnomer “Mothers for Peace,”

Solution: We all just need to join Heaven’s Gate and board that alien spaceship to comet Hale-Bop and leave the earth alone to heal.

There. I think I’ve figured this out.

Hold on a sec… wait.

Is it paper now?

Or plastic?