Tune in to Doomsday
We can watch as the planet self-destructs
I used to wonder how the end of the world would be televised.
Would the news readers just sit there calmly telling us that it’s all over?
Why wouldn’t studios be emptied in the rush to get home to loved ones before the apocalypse?
Would all channels carry the story, or could we just pour a few beers and watch the sport instead?
So many questions I’d I hoped would never be answered in my lifetime.
But now I know. The end of the world is now. It’s already being televised. It’s being played out as we speak, shown on our screens every day.
It’s not the Big Bang that people across the globe feared in the event of politicians pressing the wrong button and triggering nuclear war after taking their macho brinkmanship too far.
Balletic
The presenters don’t have to make a choice whether to rush home in a panic because climate change is a bit slower than nuclear annihilation.
The magnificence of giant ice blocks breaking apart in what appears to be balletic slow motion, cine-dramas of out of control wildfires, floods, cyclones and drought.
It’s all there in technicolor, coming over a doorstep near you soon. Or up your loo. If it hasn’t already.
The telly spectacles come with a wellthumbed guide of stats which should simply be titled We’re All Doomed.
They warn us that the planet will be intolerable for human life by the end of the century.
We all know what we’ve got to do – just cut greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels and flatulent cows to stabilise the increase in Earth’s body temperature at 1.5C. Boris Johnson says, and he’s got the law to back him up, that the UK can reach “net zero” by 2050.
He’s even called that big COP26 international conference in Glasgow for November to save the planet.
Except that’s not going too well, with no clear plan and countries bickering about who cuts most, and who pays the trillions it will cost. The bottom line is that we all pay the ultimate price.
The signs aren’t promising when Boris’s own public champion, Allegra Stratton says she “doesn’t fancy it yet” when it comes from switching her diesel for an electric car. Alok Sharma, the ex-business Secretary appointed by Boris to make the show work, also drives a diesel and has jetted round 30 countries in the past seven months.
Some blame over population. Boris certainly did. Writing a few years ago he exclaimed: “How the hell can we witter on about tackling global warming and reducing consumption when we are continuing to add so relentlessly to the number of consumers.
“The answer is politics, and political cowardice… we seem to have given up on population control.” And so he has.
The father of at least five children at the time – he still refuses to confirm the total – is now expecting his seventh. No disrespect to Carrie or the kids, who are innocents in the PM’S doublestandard ramblings.
It’s the grandkids and great grandkids who will likely face poor old Earth’s storm zero.
Poorer peoples will be hit, are already being hit, hardest and earliest as temperatures rise to murderous levels and land disappears below rising seas.
If we fail, it’s they who could face the agonising decision of which channel to watch for the last-ever reality show.