Around the middle of Earth’s twentieth century, the nearby planet of Alpha Centauri 5 stood on the brink of ecological disaster.

The sulfur dioxide smog the Centaurian inhabitants prized so highly began to disappear. Tracts of virgin rain forest encroached upon pristine clear-cuts and industrial parks. A layer of ozone blanketed the upper atmosphere, cutting off precious ultraviolet radiation. Even global warming fizzled to a disconcerting standstill.

Since the Centaurian officials were too inept to solve these problems directly, they hit upon an alternative plan. They would find a new world to colonize. Unfortunately, extensive research revealed no worlds as sulfur-dioxide-rich and ozone-layer-free as the Centaurians enjoyed, because every other species in the galaxy found these conditions extremely nasty. In the end, they decided to colonize Earth, because (1) it was close, and (2) the local inhabitants looked gullible enough to modify their own ecosystem to Centauri specifications, given the right prompting.

With this idea in mind, a team of expensive Centaurian consultants arrived and provided the Earth with a remarkable gift, called “television.” The plan worked flawlessly. With television in place, the inhabitants of Earth demanded more and more consumer products, pouring pollutants into their atmosphere and waterways in their headlong rush towards ecological degradation.

At first, the Centaurian consultants sent back glowing reports of their progress. Then they realized this was a tactical mistake. As soon as the required environmental specifications were reached, their contract would be over. All they needed to do was report a slow but steady increase in the rates of deforestation and global warming, and they could keep everyone happy for years to come.

So, while secretly working to slow down the proliferation of TVs, the Centaurian consultants continued to reassure their home planet with handsome four-color graphics showing modest but dependable gains in sulfur dioxide emissions and ozone layer depletion. But, as years went by, the officials on Alpha Centauri 5 began to grow impatient, especially considering the glowing initial reports.

The consultants now faced the opposite predicament: the prospect of being recalled for moving too slowly. So they began lobbying Earth’s legislative assemblies for new ways to degrade Earth’s environment, such as tax benefits for major industrial polluters, and government grants for clear-cutting on federal land.

The results trickled in. Since these programs required the participation of Earth’s government bureaucracies, they weren’t implemented nearly as fast as the Centaurian consultants would have liked. Finally, the Centaurians realized they were going about this completely the wrong way and, in a master-stroke of policy reversal, they lobbied instead for passage of the Paperwork Reduction Act.

The effect on the world’s paper-producing resources was swift and catastrophic. Entire rain forests disappeared overnight to ensure that copies of the Paperwork Reduction Act were distributed in triplicate to every government employee worldwide. Next, all government forms and documents (including the Act itself) were recalled and reprinted to include an official statement explaining how much paper the Paperwork Reduction Act was actually saving, and since most government forms already filled the entire page, it now took two pages to replace them. This in turn generated a flurry of congressional memos, followed by a deluge of mailings to all voting-age constituents explaining in elaborate detail that Paperwork Reduction was now the Official Government Policy, and that the public could rest assured that the matter was firmly under the direct supervision of competent, elected professionals.

This, for the Centaurians, marked the turning point of their campaign. Back home on Alpha Centauri 5, a juggernaut of bureaucracy creaked into motion to begin selecting the necessary delegations to appoint the appropriate committees to oversee the upcoming invasion and colonization of the planet Earth ...