Bummer

Climate change deniers are like those kids back in the playground who were obedient and conventional but routinely and obstinately ventriloquised the most immoderate and contrarian views of their Dad when they felt the need to be provocative. They disapproved of the various models of rebellion displayed by other kids, such as the hard case, the early smoker, the incipient gay or bohemian and, as they neared school leaving age, had already begun assembling a wardrobe of corduroy, scarlet or mustard waistcoats, brogues and cravats (we’re talking the 50s here but every generation produces them). At university, having had heard about epigrams from their reading of the classics, they would, prematurely quinquagenarian, foist feeble and unworldly attempts at the form on their less demonstrative followers, who would bray. Some years down the line they would receive a few hundred pounds a pop for writing in newspapers what their Dad would have said about climate change.

The ‘debate’ has, mercifully, moved on in the last few months. The focus now is on identifying those countries whose emissions estimates are deeply flawed and whose reduction proposals are, therefore, devoid of realism.

After that will come the Bans. Nobody talks about them yet. The banning, for example, of driving, apart from essential services. The banning of international travel, apart from those journeys of international importance. The rationing of national travel. The electricity curfews – equivalent to war- time blackout regulations. The ‘lodger’ quotas, wherein households with spare rooms will be required to take in climate refugees. The rationing of foods and liquids whose scarcity can no longer be managed by mere astronomic price escalation.

Bit of a vote-loser. Sternness may have to be applied.

Bicycling will be allowed.

10.12.2007