Bestest cleverest Muftim
Regarding the menace of climate change, Muftim Blair has proudly declared:
“There is one position even more morally culpable than failing to take preventative measures, and I’m proud to say it’s mine: encouraging the continued (and increased) consumption of fossil fuels.”
Which has suggested to me a little thought experiment: Suppose Blair isn’t among the first against the wall when the revolution comes, and indeed lives to a ripe old age. Come, imagine with me...
Scene: In the year 2050, three generations of the Blair family are gathered for Christmas festivities at the family enclave in seaside Cherrybrook. Nine-year-old Gaia rushes in from playing ‘Queenie Queenie Who’s Got the Oxygen Mask’ with other children in the neighbourhood.
Gaia: Granpa Blair, some of those kids said that you were one of the people who let the greenhouse go mad!
Other family members become agitated, look embarrassed, turn away, try to change the topic...
Gaia: Is it true, Granpa?
Granpa Blair: Why, I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, dearie.
Gaia: Them kids said you ran one of those ... what was it? ... one of those old fashioned things ... a glob ...
Granpa Blair: [cuts in] ... a blog ...
Gaia: Yeah, a blog [shrugs shoulders] ... And you made fun of people who wanted to stop all the really bad greenhouse from happening. And you were really, really mean and nasty to them, and made everyone laugh at them. And you told everyone else to just go on doing the same stuff, and even worse stuff, that all made the greenhouse go mad.
Granpa Blair: It wasn’t me, dearie; it’s all a lie. Who’s been telling you this nonsense? I’ll bet it was that young Flora Flannery. Her grandfather’s had it in for me all these years. But I outlasted him; heh heh heh...
Granma Blair nudges Granpa Blair tersely, regarding him sternly. All look around with a start as a freak wave pounds the breakwater at the edge of the property...
Granma Blair: [to herself, resuming her embroidery] Hmm, the Pacific Ocean seems a bit less violent than usual today...
Gaia: Are you sure it’s all fibs, Granpa? Do you swear by the nine seas? Cross your heart and hope to die?
Granpa Blair: [makes heart crossing gesture] Of course, dearie. Mad greenhouse was all the fault of those moonbat environmentalists I’ve been telling you about. They exaggerated stuff; so how were the good people like your Granpa supposed to know it would all come true.
Gaia: I’m sorry I listened to them, Granpa. I love you, Granpa, coz you’re the bestest, cleverest granpa in the whole wide world!
posted by Jacob A. Stam at 11/02/2006 03:25:00 PM
1 Comments:
I'm always so bemused and flummoxed by the deniers - just as I am equally so by those that still insist that there were WMD in Iraq - that I quite seriously become speechless, or at least have no idea how to fire back a convincing and substantive response, well, not without having to go and read through literature and quote other people, at length.
However, given that the Blairs and Bolts of the world continue to hammer their ideas, with such a gleeful little jig, it has finally occured to me that it does not matter WHY the climate is changing, only that we know it is.
In other words, Blair and Bolt push the contradictory nature of changes (ooh, it's getting hotter; ooh, no it's getting colder, blah, blah, ha, ha, ha), and the notion of this being a perfectly natural and normal cycle of climate change (well, it is, if you like your change cycles ramped up to the speed of light). Well, so be it, let's take it as a ramped up NORMAL climate change, not caused by human activities at all: the consequences will STILL be the same, and will still require political, social, and economic action on a massive and global scale. Forget the greenhouse gases, if they wish to - and they do - they can't seriously believe that everyone should sit on their bums while this perfectly natural and devasting climate change comes running into our lives with gusto, no matter how, you know, "normal" it is. Cancer and death are normal too.
[Yep, okay, a few too many mixed metaphors gong on here!]
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