Someone's telling the Truth on the TV - I've lived too long........
I don't suppose that I'm alone in noticing that global warming (or shall we be PC and call it "climate change"?) has suddenly become all the rage again? Today, I was warned by a particularly smug geologist-type guy that we'd already used up "two thirds of the World's resources", and that we are "living beyong our means". I can remember (and I'm only 38, hardly Methusalah) when Global Warming was right up there with Close Encounters and Crop Circles on the "Crazy of the Week" chart; only beardie open-toe-sandalled Green Party activists and Fortean Times readers gave it a second thought. Now it comes just behind the Royal Wedding and Michael Jackson on the BBC, so I suppose the Governement (not the idiots we elected 4 years ago, but the civil-service heirocracy behind them that makes the real decisions in the UK) , have finally decided that, since even parts of England (Cornwall hasn't got long, I reckon) are falling into the sea, they'll have to come clean.
Hence the smug geologist or climatologist or whatever. They've been saying this as a profession (except those who get paid to contradict them of course) for years and years, and finally, finally someone listens! And of course they're going to say "I told you so!" Wouldn't you, if you'd been telling "society" the same thing for 20 years, and it suddenly collectively woke up and said "Wait a minute, what happened to my planet?" The temptation to pull out one's beard and scream "You Ate It!!!!" (because that's what it boils down to - humans eat, societies consume, and a heap of shit is the net result) must be almost unbearable - well done all you climatologists etc., who haven't ended up on the soft-wall-ward, and who currently aren't doing 20-30 for strangling a complete stranger in an elevator who just happened to say "Is it just me, or are we getting more hurric - aaargh!!" The temptation must be severe. Morituri te salutatem.
Here's a good one, too. "The Government yesterday downplayed warnings by climatologists that....". Oh yes? And that helps, does it? Pretending something isn't happening as a coping-strategy; let's just examine that one, shall we? I have a 4-year-old who tries it, but even she, faced with the undeniable evidence of an unauthorisedly-empty ice-cream tub, generally puts her paws up and gives in. In fact, she's just recently giving up entirely on that as a strategy; she's got "it wasn't me" in R&D at the moment. So we have Governments who are at about the stage of development, collectively, of a 4-year-old. A very bright 4 year-old, no denying that, but surely we should be expecting a bit more from our elected representatives? What happens when Bangladesh disappears below sea-level then? Will that be our global Empty Ice-cream Tub, the one we can't possibly explain away? And species-wise we're going to encounter the very same problem my daughter is having with "It wasn't Me!". Nobody except she and I live in this apartment; if it wasn't her, then it must have been......er, no, that's not going to work, it it? But just in case, let me be the first to take up the cry: "It wasn't the Dolphins!"
There is something profoundly wasteful, I think, about a race capable of building Mont St. Michel, or composing vast and beautiful music for gods or for pleasure, dreaming all the dreams the human race has conjured up in poetry and song, drowning in it's own shit, but there you go. The water that covers Bangladesh ("Who ate the ice-cream? George? Tony? Did you eat the ice-cream?") will be full of condoms and raw sewage, mutant fish like we find in the "Hospital Zones" of the North Sea nowadays, old fridges and car tyres, plastic which will continue to exist as the framework of a six-pack of beer forever. Scary that, really; long after I'm dead, the plastic that held together every six-pack or four-pack I've ever drunk will still be existing somewhere, flopping listlessly in the heart of a conglomeration of algae and scum that have used it's handy cellular shape to carve out an ecological niche in the suffocating seas. And somewhere, clinging on to the heights of some Andean or Himalayan non-toxic zone, or deep in a bunker somewhere, a Government will be "downplaying" reports of roving gangs of mutant cannibal lobster-men..........
I'm writing this a week before the General Election in the UK. We've had the deeply unedifying spectacle of our politicians competing to hump the country dry - I mean, form a Government for the next 4 years. Like most people of my age, I've given up actually voting for people, I just vote against the real Loony Toons (BNP, UKIP, The Conservatives). Scum will always float to the top, and that's what we get in British politics too, one shouldn't kid oneself otherwise. But for the first time, Labour, the actual party in Government and Party most likely to form the next Govt, according to the polls, have included "Climate Change" in their manifesto (or at least speeches), referring to it as the single most important issue confronting mankind. Wehey for the Earth! then, you might think. At last someone (someone political, I mean, not us sad old hippies who've been banging on about it for decades) is taking things seriously!
However, this doesn't change the fact that the ice-cream has been eaten. Maybe I should change this metaphor; maybe the ice-cream was in fact devoured by a man-made virus originally designed to - yeah, ride it, jojo, this is a good one - break down fat molecules on the insides of your fridge and make cleaning that much easier (for your Phillipino maid), which unexpectedly, I mean literally a 1 in 5 billion chance, has spread to the ice-cream and is now threatening the entire dairy-product section of the refrigerator. "The Government is downplaying scientists' fears that the virus has jumped or will jump the "species barrier" to the Parma ham......", whilst "Christian leaders are reminding the faithful that a "kosher kitchen" comes from the Old Testament in the first place". Meanwhile, "The manufacturers of "FatBuster(TM)" were unavailable for comment, but a source close to the DA's office has hinted that the company has filed for bankruptcy and the directors are now in hiding on or near Mount Annapurna." The metaphor may change, the script never.
Back in the '80s, I was very involved with the Green Party. This wasn't because I was utterly stupid; even then, I didn't actually expect all the Evil Plutocrats to listen to what I had to say and acheive Ecological Enlightenment overnight. I was just more prepared to put my scrawny back to the Immovable Object and shove. I think I imagined, just because we were right, and the earth really was going down the drain (in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where do you think?), pointing this out to people would be enough to change attitudes and behaviour. I didn't understand then, as I do now, that the "World", as we call it, is actually owned by about 1000 or so really rich people, who are mostly very old, and who don't give a shit about the rest of us because they're going to be dead soon anyway. Incidentally, I bet Bill Gates pisses them all off a treat. These really rich people live in the shadows normally; Bill Gates openly being rich (and philanthropical to boot) all over the place has probably cost them a couple of heart-transplants each. It must be a bit like the Lord High Mandrake or whatever they call the boss Mason "coming out" on TV, apron, trouser-leg and all.
So, as an end-time phenomenon, someone telling the truth on the TV beats any number of 2-headed goats for me. What were those Horsemen again? War, Famine, Pestilence and Death, right? And they're supposed to "ride forth", I believe, at the end of the world. Maybe someone should let them know the party has started without them, that it's turned out to be a secular do after all. Or should that be ecumenical?
Hence the smug geologist or climatologist or whatever. They've been saying this as a profession (except those who get paid to contradict them of course) for years and years, and finally, finally someone listens! And of course they're going to say "I told you so!" Wouldn't you, if you'd been telling "society" the same thing for 20 years, and it suddenly collectively woke up and said "Wait a minute, what happened to my planet?" The temptation to pull out one's beard and scream "You Ate It!!!!" (because that's what it boils down to - humans eat, societies consume, and a heap of shit is the net result) must be almost unbearable - well done all you climatologists etc., who haven't ended up on the soft-wall-ward, and who currently aren't doing 20-30 for strangling a complete stranger in an elevator who just happened to say "Is it just me, or are we getting more hurric - aaargh!!" The temptation must be severe. Morituri te salutatem.
Here's a good one, too. "The Government yesterday downplayed warnings by climatologists that....". Oh yes? And that helps, does it? Pretending something isn't happening as a coping-strategy; let's just examine that one, shall we? I have a 4-year-old who tries it, but even she, faced with the undeniable evidence of an unauthorisedly-empty ice-cream tub, generally puts her paws up and gives in. In fact, she's just recently giving up entirely on that as a strategy; she's got "it wasn't me" in R&D at the moment. So we have Governments who are at about the stage of development, collectively, of a 4-year-old. A very bright 4 year-old, no denying that, but surely we should be expecting a bit more from our elected representatives? What happens when Bangladesh disappears below sea-level then? Will that be our global Empty Ice-cream Tub, the one we can't possibly explain away? And species-wise we're going to encounter the very same problem my daughter is having with "It wasn't Me!". Nobody except she and I live in this apartment; if it wasn't her, then it must have been......er, no, that's not going to work, it it? But just in case, let me be the first to take up the cry: "It wasn't the Dolphins!"
There is something profoundly wasteful, I think, about a race capable of building Mont St. Michel, or composing vast and beautiful music for gods or for pleasure, dreaming all the dreams the human race has conjured up in poetry and song, drowning in it's own shit, but there you go. The water that covers Bangladesh ("Who ate the ice-cream? George? Tony? Did you eat the ice-cream?") will be full of condoms and raw sewage, mutant fish like we find in the "Hospital Zones" of the North Sea nowadays, old fridges and car tyres, plastic which will continue to exist as the framework of a six-pack of beer forever. Scary that, really; long after I'm dead, the plastic that held together every six-pack or four-pack I've ever drunk will still be existing somewhere, flopping listlessly in the heart of a conglomeration of algae and scum that have used it's handy cellular shape to carve out an ecological niche in the suffocating seas. And somewhere, clinging on to the heights of some Andean or Himalayan non-toxic zone, or deep in a bunker somewhere, a Government will be "downplaying" reports of roving gangs of mutant cannibal lobster-men..........
I'm writing this a week before the General Election in the UK. We've had the deeply unedifying spectacle of our politicians competing to hump the country dry - I mean, form a Government for the next 4 years. Like most people of my age, I've given up actually voting for people, I just vote against the real Loony Toons (BNP, UKIP, The Conservatives). Scum will always float to the top, and that's what we get in British politics too, one shouldn't kid oneself otherwise. But for the first time, Labour, the actual party in Government and Party most likely to form the next Govt, according to the polls, have included "Climate Change" in their manifesto (or at least speeches), referring to it as the single most important issue confronting mankind. Wehey for the Earth! then, you might think. At last someone (someone political, I mean, not us sad old hippies who've been banging on about it for decades) is taking things seriously!
However, this doesn't change the fact that the ice-cream has been eaten. Maybe I should change this metaphor; maybe the ice-cream was in fact devoured by a man-made virus originally designed to - yeah, ride it, jojo, this is a good one - break down fat molecules on the insides of your fridge and make cleaning that much easier (for your Phillipino maid), which unexpectedly, I mean literally a 1 in 5 billion chance, has spread to the ice-cream and is now threatening the entire dairy-product section of the refrigerator. "The Government is downplaying scientists' fears that the virus has jumped or will jump the "species barrier" to the Parma ham......", whilst "Christian leaders are reminding the faithful that a "kosher kitchen" comes from the Old Testament in the first place". Meanwhile, "The manufacturers of "FatBuster(TM)" were unavailable for comment, but a source close to the DA's office has hinted that the company has filed for bankruptcy and the directors are now in hiding on or near Mount Annapurna." The metaphor may change, the script never.
Back in the '80s, I was very involved with the Green Party. This wasn't because I was utterly stupid; even then, I didn't actually expect all the Evil Plutocrats to listen to what I had to say and acheive Ecological Enlightenment overnight. I was just more prepared to put my scrawny back to the Immovable Object and shove. I think I imagined, just because we were right, and the earth really was going down the drain (in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, where do you think?), pointing this out to people would be enough to change attitudes and behaviour. I didn't understand then, as I do now, that the "World", as we call it, is actually owned by about 1000 or so really rich people, who are mostly very old, and who don't give a shit about the rest of us because they're going to be dead soon anyway. Incidentally, I bet Bill Gates pisses them all off a treat. These really rich people live in the shadows normally; Bill Gates openly being rich (and philanthropical to boot) all over the place has probably cost them a couple of heart-transplants each. It must be a bit like the Lord High Mandrake or whatever they call the boss Mason "coming out" on TV, apron, trouser-leg and all.
So, as an end-time phenomenon, someone telling the truth on the TV beats any number of 2-headed goats for me. What were those Horsemen again? War, Famine, Pestilence and Death, right? And they're supposed to "ride forth", I believe, at the end of the world. Maybe someone should let them know the party has started without them, that it's turned out to be a secular do after all. Or should that be ecumenical?
posted by holojojo at 12:47 PM
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