There is a view that removing all 15-year-old boys from this earth would not only help global warming but also our cultural horizon.
Supporters of this view will then be heartened to hear the story reported by the Chicago Tribune of a 15-year-old boy who suffered a serious trauma. His parents took away his Xbox.
The boy, a resident of Buffalo Grove, Ill., which sounds like the sort of place where discipline is imparted along traditional lines, decided to express his feelings and exert his identity. He called 911 in order to ask the police whether his parents were, indeed, within their rights to remove his gaming equipment from his sensitive little fingers.
However, brave as all 15-year-olds are, he appears to have hung up. So the Buffalo Grove police which, on its website, declares that it is "dedicated to making our community a better place to live and work", wandered along to his house.
Where they may have just laughed until their shirts billowed like the kaftans of the late Luciano Pavarotti.
Commander Steve Husak told the Tribune that the officers not only told the little tyke that parents do, indeed, have the right to take away his gadgetry, but that it might be an idea to listen to what they had to say.
It is not recorded why the parents took away the boy's Xbox. Perhaps it was because he's a vastly intelligent youth who will soon be the governor of Illinois.