The Inner Monologue

For decades, America’s MAGA climate experts assured us that sea-level rise was a hoax. The oceans were not rising, the scientists were lying, and anyone concerned about coastal flooding was an alarmist trying to confiscate gas stoves.

But the movement has bravely reconsidered its position now that the water is approaching beachfront hotels, golf courses, and donor properties.

Fortunately, the same people who spent thirty years denying the problem have developed a solution: We will pump the excess water out of the ocean.

Not ordinary pumps, of course. Big pumps. Beautiful pumps. Possibly the biggest pumps anyone has ever seen. People will look at these pumps and say, “Sir, those are tremendous pumps.”

The pumps will be connected to big, extra-long hoses stretching hundreds of miles inland. Ocean water will be pumped through the hoses and released somewhere safely out of sight—perhaps Arizona, Nevada, or any other state whose electoral votes are not immediately threatened by saltwater.

Once inland, the water will simply soak into the ground.

That is how water works. You pour it on the ground, it disappears, and the problem is solved. Farmers have known this for centuries, although they have traditionally made the process unnecessarily complicated by worrying about drainage, soil chemistry, aquifers, and whether salt kills crops.

Under the new plan, such negativity will no longer be tolerated.

Scientists claim the oceans contain roughly 1.3 billion cubic kilometers of water and that even reducing sea level by a single inch would require relocating an almost unimaginable volume. But those calculations were produced using metric units, which are inherently suspicious and probably European.

The plan’s architects prefer common sense.

“If one pump moves some water, a thousand pumps move a thousand times as much water,” explained one former climate-change skeptic recently promoted to Senior Ocean Engineer. “And if that isn’t enough, we build more pumps.”

Asked how the pumps would be powered, he proposed gasoline generators. Asked whether burning that much fuel might worsen climate change, he clarified that climate change remains a hoax except when applying for federal coastal-protection money.

There are also questions about where the seawater will go after being pumped inland. Experts warn that dumping saltwater onto farmland could destroy crops, contaminate freshwater aquifers, kill vegetation, and leave vast salt deposits behind as the water evaporates.

Supporters dismiss those objections as details.

“We’re not pumping saltwater,” one lawmaker explained. “We’re pumping American ocean water.”

The proposal includes several safeguards. Each hose will carry a sticker reading “Fresh Water Only,” ensuring that the water understands what is expected of it. The pumps will also be programmed to reject sharks, submarines, and immigrants attempting to enter the country through the intake valves.

The enormous quantity of salt left behind could even create jobs. Unemployed coastal residents would be issued shovels and sent inland to harvest it. The administration could then impose tariffs on imported salt, making domestic salt approximately $47 per teaspoon and restoring American greatness to the seasoning industry.

There is still some disagreement over the hose route. Some conservatives favor pumping the water into Democratic cities, allowing the project to serve simultaneously as flood control and urban redevelopment. Others propose pumping it into Canada, although engineers caution that water flows downhill and Canada is inconveniently north.

A third faction wants to send it to California, apparently unaware that California already touches the ocean.

Critics have suggested addressing the causes of rising seas through emissions reductions, renewable energy, coastal planning, wetland restoration, and resilient infrastructure. That approach, however, would require long-term thinking, international cooperation, and acknowledging that scientists sometimes know things.

The pump plan requires none of those.

It also has the great political advantage of being visible. No voter can photograph a reduction in atmospheric carbon dioxide, but everyone can stand beside a giant pump while a politician cuts a ribbon.

The administration estimates the project will cost $14 billion. Independent analysts estimate $14 trillion. The final cost will therefore be classified for national-security reasons and awarded without competitive bidding to a company incorporated last Tuesday by the president’s cousin.

Construction will begin as soon as engineers solve a few minor technical challenges involving energy, pressure, corrosion, elevation, land acquisition, environmental destruction, aquifer contamination, international water law, and the fundamental conservation of mass.

But these are merely obstacles placed in our way by people who lack vision.

America did not become great by accepting that water seeks its own level. We became great by telling water what level it is permitted to seek.

For years, the experts said climate change required difficult choices. They were wrong. It requires only big pumps, big hoses, and the courage to release several trillion tons of saltwater in somebody else’s backyard.

Problem solved.