A lot of people ask, “Barry, what's it like not to exist?” Well, everyone does walk right past without seeing me, but I can go into people's houses and steal food from right in front of them.

Next they ask, “Barry, when did you cease to exist?” It's been a while. But I couldn't prove it until recently when I tried to fill out an Internet survey from the Republican Party.

It came in a pop-up ad for gopteamleader.com – “an online toolbox for Republican activists.” The survey said, “Tell President Bush what issues are most important to you … Please check the issues that will most determine how you will vote in the 2002 elections.”

Well, you wouldn't know it to look at me, but my single most important issue is global warming. The average temperature of the earth has risen a degree or two over the last few years, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Things are happening more or less the way mainstream scientists speculated they would, including the spread of tropical diseases – encephalitis, malaria and West Nile virus – into regions that heretofore have not been tropical. So I thought, “Gosh, I'd better tell the president!”

But “global warming” wasn't a choice on the survey – nor even just “the environment.” I could choose only education, national defense (if we burned less gas, wouldn't we be less in thrall of hostile oil-producing nations?), protecting America's homeland, family values (want your kids to have a habitable planet?), health care, Social Security, economy/jobs and crime. That was it.

It was then that I realized I could dematerialize and walk through solid objects.

Mind you, this mysterious ability sometimes weakens. In March 2001, Bush pushed a bill to make power plants produce less carbon dioxide. CO2 is the most crucial gas in the chemistry of global warming, and for mankind's contribution to it – the part that we all can do something about – the United States produces more CO2 than any other country (mostly from our cars or, far worse yet, SUVs.)

The announcement of this bill caught me at a bad time, though, since I just then was taking full advantage of my nonexistence – my head stuck into the freezer at a busy Haagen Daz ice cream parlor, as I freely grazed on hazelnut gelato. Bush backed out on that pledge four days later, though, saying it would hinder energy production. We can hunt down every terrorist on the planet, but we can't face the power companies.

Then in February, the president announced the Clear Skies Initiative to reduce emissions of nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxide and mercury. At that point, I was standing behind the counter of a butcher shop, eating the apple-chicken sausages while the clerk stood mere inches away. I blinked into existence – a string of sausage casings and chicken blood hanging out of my mouth.

But it turns out Bush's list of gases did not include the main problem, CO2. And not only would his reform make it easier for old coal plants to expand without meeting modern air quality standards, but, according to the Christian Science Monitor, even the reductions in nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxide and mercury would be less than existing laws would require. So I disappeared again, leaving behind a confused butcher and, tragically, my best pair of sunglasses.

Then last June, Bush's own EPA said the recent global warming trend “is real and has been particularly strong within the past 20 years … due mostly to human activities.” Unfortunately, I was walking around Times Square right then in my boxer shorts, getting the full effect of an early summer breeze. But then Bush slighted his own administration's declaration as “a report put out by the bureaucracy.” So I was able to come out from hiding in the subway tunnel and go find some pants.

Overall, though, I lead a pretty free life. I do and say whatever I want, and even the U.S. president and the main party in power can't see me. But hey, why bother telling you? If the planet keeps getting hotter, a lot more people are going to know what it's like not to exist.