High impact man

For millions of New Yorkers, the terrifying prospect of unchecked global warming, with its lethal droughts and flooded cities, has become a rallying cry to save the earth. For Queens native Bob Thompson, 33, the whole concept of excess carbon in the atmosphere is little more than a fad.

“The idea of global warming has been around since at least the ’70s,” he explains. “Now it’s become an excuse to make money with books, movies and concerts. Al Gore was in the White House for eight years and didn’t do a thing to stop global warming!”

Thompson, a bartender who posts antienvironmentalist screeds on his website (drinkingwithbob.com), says the only thing that should make someone think twice about driving a car is the price of gas. “I’m not someone who is worried about air quality,” he says, explaining that public transportation “doesn’t even come into my head as an option.” (He happily drives a decidedly nonhybrid 1996 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, which gets about 18 miles per gallon.)

Thompson also bemoans the way he is forced by law to separate his recyclables for curbside pickup, always goes for plastic over paper and leaves the AC on all day, so it’s cool when he gets home. And his rant on Bloomberg’s congestion-pricing plan (“When is it going to stop? When is this freaking city going to get its freaking hands out of the freaking pockets of the working class?”) burned up YouTube.

For Thompson, the only green that tree huggers are interested in are the dollar bills in his pocket. “If the environment needs to be saved, it will save itself,” he says. “Nothing we do is going to change that.”

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