I don't usually react to this whole doomsday this-time-it's-true-prophecy circles for couple of decades now. But, for once, why not...
I used to be "green". As a young man. I used to be a cyclist. I used to protest in accordance with this-time-it's-for-real doomsday prophecies of my own generation and time. And there are a few things I've learned since.
We live in much cleaner world than that of my youth. When acid rains were a real thing. And the forests across Europe were literally dying in droves. When rivers across mainland continent had a different colour every week depending on production line predominant in the local factory. When the seas surrounding this continent were full of pollution and sewage and dipping in lakes in summer was a recipe for untreatable skin disease. When every month press would report fish surfacing in local streams belly up. When tap water was not drinkable without double filtering. When food crops were being sprayed every year with pesticides so strong that seasonal workers had to work in hazmats.
I spent most of the summer holidays of my childhood in asbestos huts painted with lead paint. By the beaches so dirty and polluted that the scout masters carried epipens in first aid kits.
I remember streets full of cars with two stroke engines. I remember the times when visiting large city would make your clothes really stink of leaded petrol and a weekend out in a mining town would mean spitting phlegm with black tar for the next two days.
I remember taking iodine on sugar cubes at my school when atomic power became a real, viable threat to our lives and futures. In real life, not in some awesome Netflix series.
I protested nuclear power at the gates of plants for the rest of my youth. This is my real world testimony.
So when tou tell me it's hundred seconds to midnight, I'll be honest with you - you a-holes don't how good you have it. Cause I don't remember the world looking this great and clean in my lifetime. No need to thank my generation for it. You're welcome
And here's the moment of hard truth. From an old "greenie" to all of you - young "greens".
While the idiots across this land glue their hands to the tarmac out of sheer boredom and stupidity, three quarters of earth population only aspire to this lifestyle. And still earn less than a £150 a month. And you know what, you spoilt, 1% dumdums? They flipping deserve it. They've been making your "What do we want - not this, when do we want it - now" protest t-shirts that match the shade of your organic soya milk in your fair trade Starbucks coffee for a farthing on a sixpence for far too long.
Their time is coming. They also deserve twenty first century. Temperature controlled homes. Clean water. Heated schools and universities to study non existent "sciences" proclaiming luddite theories. They also deserve to drive to work in their own cars. Take their girlfriends out on Saturday night in tarted up whale spoiler diesel Corsa and drop off their kids to school in Discovery. Plow their fields with Lamborghini tractors. Fly with Ryan Air for a binge weekend to another Asian, African or South American country with their mates for some cheap booze and local girls. They also deserve nerdy weekends with a playstation. And sure as hell deserve to live the lives we, the 1% in Europe enjoyed for at least the last fifty years.
So, go on - unglue yourself from the surface of the road your family owns for perpetuity for a second and tell 5 billions of people "oh, it's already too late". Tell them it's too late for the remaining 77% of the world to enjoy your riches and that they all have to join your imaginary, parallel universe where everyone rides bicycles, takes a tube for their average 43.6 mile commute, travels for four days from London to Johny O'Groats in £100,000 electric cars, and sings humabaya to the hum of government grant sponsored solar powered heat pump because the arctic caps of your lofty, bored imagination are melting and the time to act, on your Apple Watch "is NOW!"
For once, in your useless life, be honest. Even just for one minute. And explain to them how they can't have even a mere shadow of what you have, because you want them to jump straight from the medieval times, basic tools, illiteracy and crapping under a tree to your unobtainable vision of a petrol-less, gas-less, bovine-fartless lala world - on their weekly wage.
Or alternatively remove yourself from M25 and go pleasure yourself collectively in the nearest bush. Why don't you. Flipping hypocrites.
I don't care if you throw me into one bag with conspiracy theorists, deniers. whathave you, I know I'm not. I just want to shake your imagination back into reality. Be green. no one wants to live in a world that's worse that before. But thread among that agenda carefully. "Green" is business.
Beware of the a-holes that tell you it's time to end current tech in the name of preserving oil and coal, just to replace it with "clean" energy and technology based on the rarest of resources.
Beware of the pseudo science from inter-this indie-that pressure circles with funding so vast that all lobby groups in the history of this planet gasp with envy.
Beware of the agendas that depend on keeping three quarters of this planet in absolute poverty to "repair" immediate, urging "problems" of the world that's cleaner and healthier than it was for decades.
And most of all beware of the a-holes that tell you the gas you're breathing out is the poison killing the world. It's the world you don't want to rescue.
And if it really is too late, then just live your last days to the full and flipping enjoy it. This planet doesn't need your help. It survived much worse. And if a mere 7 billion humans can ef it up, then it's way too delicate for our species anyway. None of the other inhabitants will shed a tear when we're gone, that's for sure. That's all I have, go away now.
End of drunken rant.
