Serious Post

Where do I start? At the beginning, I suppose...

Forty years ago, I remember my closest brother sticking pins in my mum's cigarettes to make it harder for her to poison herself. She must have got through twenty a day, easily. 'Cancerettes', he called them. And 'coffin nails'. This was in the days when the killers were still blithely claiming that fags were good for you, but everyone with half a brain knew the truth. Still, she claimed, she'd rather lose five years off her life than spend those years missing the joy of fags.

Fair enough, Mum, I thought, it's your choice and your funeral. And yes, it was her choice. Of course, had I known about passive smoking in those days, I might have made more of an effort to persuade her to give up. Or at least open a window. We had to paint our living room ceiling twice as often as the kids' bedroom, to hide the smoke stains.

Well, Mum's funeral was five years ago. But there's a parallel going on on a much larger scale right now.

Thirty years ago, during the "energy shortage" of the mid-70s, James Burke had a tv show where he asked members of the public to try to predict the future. One prediction, generally agreed upon, was that the private car would be a thing of the past by 1982, an unaffordable luxury. Even then, it was recognised that cars cost a lot to make, a lot to run and a lot to maintain. And they contribute to atmospheric pollution.

Twenty years ago, climate scientists announced that they were a bit worried about global warming and perhaps we should, you know, do something about it? So the oil companies trotted out their own scientists who said that there was no such thing as global warming. There may not have been as many naysayers as doom-mongers, but they were far better financed and people like a positive message.

Ten years ago, it really looked serious. All the major players got together in a city called Kyoto and signed an agreement to cut their carbon emissions to below 1990 levels by 2008. Except that the US and Australian governments refused - and still refuse - to ratify the treaty. Their own published reports showed that although global warming does indeed exist, it's mostly due to circumstances beyond our control and there's nothing we can do about it.

Now, it turns out that Dubya has been in the pocket of the big oil companies all along. Who would have thought it? A major government forging official reports to make it appear that all was well? Shock and indeed, horror.

Of course, it's what comes next that worries me. Climatologists are saying that we're rapidly approaching a tipping point, beyond which no power on Earth will be able to prevent the tundra from thawing, the polar ice caps from melting and the oceanic conveyor belt from shutting down, plunging Europe into a new ice age while Atlanta becomes the new Atlantis; small islands will disappear forever; Waterworld, blah blah blah.

Any bets on how long it takes Big Oil to come to the conclusion that: "We've already passed the tipping point, so we might as well eat, drink, drive, fly and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die"?

There is still one hope, if we act now. It has been proven that there is a link between global warming and the number of pirates on the seven seas. As pirate numbers have fallen, so average global temperatures have risen. Bobby Henderson is trying to negotiate the purchase of a ship which his Pastafarians can use as official missionary transportation to spread the word and boost pirate numbers. Please lend your wholehearted support to this worthy cause.

I love messing about in boats, me.