SEA LEVELS to drown coastal areas;
crops to fail, insects to die, we're to follow.
MAY ENDS IN JUNE
SUNDERLAND THRO TO CUP
ITALIAN LEADS GIRO
Apocalypse and politics alongside entertainment and the trivia of everyday life.
This is
the “Climate Emergency”, as The Guardian now calls climate change, recognizing
the need to ramp up the aggro.
Scientists
postulate that the countdown for the extinction of all life on earth will begin
in 30 or so years from now, unless there is global action to curb the excesses
of growth economics which has underpinned our way of death. It began with the Industrial Revolution spewing smoke into the atmosphere 200 years ago and has been exacerbated largely in ignorance by human carbon burning activities ever since.
In view
of all this, I’d like to suggest that the looming chaos should be the major
story in the media, spelling out what we must do to stave off the worst of it.
And
governments should hold public information meetings in every town and city to
brief everyone on the worst case scenario unfolding, empowering people with a
strategy to get on top of this.
At the
moment we’re sleep walking in the dark and the ongoing Extinction protests are designed
to wake us up.
So far
measures taken to reduce pollution have been woefully inadequate. In fact,
major car manufacturers have increased the risk by conning the public into
believing diesels were cleaner when they are spewing out more muck than petrol
engines.
I feel
that the extinction stories lose their gravitas as they compete for our
attention with regional and national news, sport, entertainment.
I can
hear the breakfast conversation. “I see were all going to be extinct. Response: Oh, yes, bud did you read how Yates
had a disastrous time trial in the Giro?
The
extinction story needs a black border on the page and the headline: “We’re
fucked.”
Many
people remain in denial of course. I’d love for them to be right. But the
scientific consensus seems pretty sound and very scary.
Roger Hallam, co-founder of the
Radical Think Tank, the organiser of the Extinction Rebellion, galvanised
support for the current protests going on around the country when he outlined the
bleak current scientific thinking on man-made climate change.
Here’s the link.
When I listened to this my heart sank.
To summarise. The loss of West Antarctica ice means
the sun’s heat will no longer be reflected back into the space and instead by
absorbed in the ground. So, as well the rise in sea levels, we can expect a
huge rise in temperatures.
Lands in the
equatorial regions will feel it first. When their crops die it will trigger a
huge exodus - millions heading for comparatively cooler climbs.
i.e. That’s us. Here
- Northern Europe including this off-shore island.
Meanwhile, holiday companies exhort us to burn
more carbon by flying abroad in the pursuit of pleasure - to get away from it
all. If they could get us to the Moon
I’d be tempted.
Here’s
my random selection of recent headlines illustrating how the impact of the climate
emergency stories are lost as they compete for attention alongside the usual
fare.
In the
best traditions of fake news I’ve made up a couple of them, in a bid to create
a laugh with this otherwise crazy piece
Headline stories of the week.
POLITICS
Tory grey suits
tell May time to go.
“May ends in June” –
as The Daily Mirror headline put it.
SPORT
Italians on top
in Giro, but Roglic remains poised to challenge for overall victory.
EXTINCTION
Loss of the West Antarctica
ice sheet would raise global sea levels by 5 metres, drowning coastal cities
around the world.
HOLIDAYS (advert)
Discover Norway’s
beautiful coast in 12 day cruise...
At pre-sea rise prices
starting at £1,249.
Team Sky lives on
because the new sponsor’s name, IEONOS, just doesn’t roll off the tongue. But their dark coloured jerseys are
inspirational because they are rendered invisible to the opposition.
HEALTH
“No jab, no school” policy needed to curb
measles.
POLLUTION
Fall in polluting
cars entering London’s low emission zone, but millions still dying from toxic
air.
BOLLOCKS
Cameron’s Brexshit
(Excusing himself from creating Brexshit hell) book due in September.
INSECT numbers
down at Chelsea Flower Show.
Brexshit Party
ahead in EU election poll …
Brexshiter Nigel
Farage - to cheers of “Ni-Gel, Ni-Gel” at North of England rally - tells fellow
drunks the EU can’t tell us what to do. If we want to have round chimney pots
we shall have them.
ART
Titan works to be
shown together for first time since 1704.
MORE POLITICS
Boris to bid for
May’s job. It’s no secret he wants to park his bike in No 10’s hallway.
British heavy
metal put the “snot and piss” back into rock.
Film of the week:
“Birds of Passion”.
The “Firm” opens
at Hampstead Theatre.
SCARY
Bowel cancer on
rise among younger people.
Police tear gas
students in Brazil.
FAKERY
Trump pardons fraudster.
EXTRATERRESTERIAL
Vogons, from the
planet Vogsphere (in Douglas Adams
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) give notice that the Earth is to be
destroyed to make way for an intergalactic bypass.
No one bothers to read
the planning consents to register their objection and earth is duly destroyed
in a less than a minute. The grandparents of today’s Brexshitters take refuge in
a pub where they place paper bags over their heads.
Of course, in that
story earth was restored. But that was fiction.
This isn’t.
*From A Day in the
Life sung by John Lennon on the Beatles brilliant Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band album.
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