Yesterday was my last day of work for 3 weeks. In case you ever wondered what I do for a living I empty and service the sanitary towel bin at a soup kitchen in King’s Lynn. It’s surprisingly taxing and more than a little stressful, so I’ve decided I needed a nice break to get into all this Christmas stuff. It’s taken a while, and I was getting a bit worried last week, but I think I’m finally getting into the appropriate amount of Christmas spirit. The other morning I got in my car and the radio was playing Slade and that didn’t work, though it still beats Vibe FM. I’m nearly 40 and a miserable, ragged toe nail of a man so I really, really don’t understand why anyone, ever, would want to listen to dance music at half past six on a cold winter’s morning. Last weekend my ‘the wife’ and I almost got into an argument over the Christmas tree and in some people’s eyes that’s probably worse than murder. We did manage to quench that nearly flare and another dash of rum in the mulled wine put it to bed completely.
This weekend we have the have the in-laws coming so I’ve not got a great deal of time to write, and Christmas deserves a bit of effort so I’m diverting to another topic, which is climate change. A group of people have been exchanging BO and halitosis around a big table for 2 weeks in Paris trying to find a solution to the problem of us destroying ourselves and poor countries being totally screwed over by rich countries for lots of years. However, this solution has to allow the rich countries to not take any of the blame because that might make them blush. America has fought to remove the term compensation from the draft because this will suggest that in some strange way they have been casually pumping out more pollution than anyone else for the last 50 years whilst their ex-presidents have said things like ‘I don’t believe in climate change’. Morons. We’re not great, mind you, but they’re worse. After all they have a moron so moronic that he thought he’d win friends by stopping all Muslims entering his country, a country built on immigration. It’s fantastic that we still have people so eye wateringly thick that it makes everyone else feel like Einstein. A bit like watching the Jeremy Kyle show. Elsewhere at the climate change conference a Chinese delegate was unable to explain properly why China was now belching out more pollution even than the USA. Actually he couldn’t really admit properly that this was the case in fact, so just nodded and smiled, seemingly amused by all the attention he was getting and the fact that millions of Chinese folk are choking on their breakfast while Beijing is engulfed in a cloud of toxic fog.
The brutal fact is that (sorry Dubya) climate change is happening and it was happening before and it’s not going to go away. It will affect us, and our children (well not mine, I don’t have any so they won’t need to get killed in a bloody civil war over who gets the last glass of brown water) and their children and so on and of course it doesn’t matter what’s in that draft contract they’re all probably going to sign in Paris, before they piss kerosene into the skies to fly back home. The Africans are livid and they have lots of reasons to be. They’ve been raped and pillaged and butchered and shared out and demolished and chewed up for hundreds of years and so when they sit in a room with smug, glossy negotiators denying every accusatory word it must make their blood boil. It’s the equivalent of a bulldog standing next to a big pile of bulldog poo and shaking its head, pointing at the guinea pig. I’ve contributed to climate change and so have you. A goat herder in Angola? Not so much.
So what’s the solution? Yes, let’s make deals and say we’ll cut this by 2% and reduce that by 12% and halve the other by 2025. And what happens if we don’t? Nothing. Zilch. A big, fat zero with lights flickering all night long. We’re so self-involved and daft we’ll just say good effort old chap, try a bit harder next time etc, and then get annoyed having to find somewhere else to go on holiday because the Maldives have vanished beneath the waves. A whole country gone. Selfish little Maldives. We’re so arrogant that we think it’s great to have a night time Grand Prix, floodlit to kingdom come, because Grand Prix’s just aren’t enough of a pointless enough waste of time, money and fuel already (sorry Mark). We’re such cretins that we have huge, expensive conferences on climate change, in winter, with the lights and heating on, while pretending to fight Islam, keep Vladimir Vader at bay and generally avoid World War 3.
That’s enough. It’s a serious problem and I haven’t got a clue what the answer is. I’m not sure there really is one and for a species that claim to be so enlightened and advanced that’s very, very depressing. So let’s cheer ourselves by buying more fairy lights and eating more food in the next 3 weeks than some people will probably enjoy in a year. Sounds like fun to me.
G.B.Hewitt. 13.12.2015 (postponed by a day due to in-law complications)
I’ve just flicked through todays (yesterdays) Times and can’t find the Paris summit anywhere. I’ll take another look, a proper look, a bit later but the fact we’ve admitted we’re destroying our planet and can’t be bothered to mend it isn’t on the front page is a worry. I also got distracted reading about a boy who was crushed by a bus because he was on a hoverboard, a device which police have warned is dangerous and illegal to use on pavements and roads. Tragic? Yes, very. Stupid? Sorry, ditto.
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 