Why the great CO2 shortage is suddenly taking the fizz out of life
Do you ever get a sudden, vertiginous feeling that you don’t have a clue how the world works? Did you know, for example, that you need a special kind of man-made carbon dioxide to kill a pig in modern Britain? The same kind that puts bubbles in your beer?
I had never, until yesterday, given a moment’s thought to the production of commercial CO2 – not even as I screwed another cylinder into my Sodastream. But it turns out that carbon dioxide is a big deal in modern food production. It is used to kill pigs and chickens humanely (if you call suffocation humane); to put the fizz into beer, cider and soft drinks; and to extend the shelf life of fresh produce (mixed salads, for example, are sold in plastic bags filled with carbon dioxide, to slow the growth of bacteria).
And the bad news is, we’re about to run out of it. Northern Europe is already struggling with a CO2 shortage, and now three of Britain’s biggest Co2producing plants have closed for maintenance works. The timing – summer weather, the World Cup, barbecue season – couldn’t be worse. The pub chain Wetherspoons has warned that some drinks will soon be off the menu. Tesco online has already run out of Schweppes lemonade. Poultry producers have told the government that 60 per cent of chicken processing plants could be out of operation within days. That would create a backlog of hundreds of thousands of birds waiting to be slaughtered.
Of all the ways to bring Britain’s food chain to a halt, would you ever have guessed at this? Unless you’re in the food business, how could you? The world of high-tech mass production we live in requires us all to be specialists, just as Adam Smith predicted. And the corollary of specialism is ignorance. We learn the workings of our own industries, but live in a state of mystified acceptance about everything else. Who took the caffeine out of my decaffeinated latte, and how? Are pencil leads still made of lead, and, if not, what? Why is my internet connection so slow? What actually is connecting me to the internet?
In a way, it’s quite relaxing. There’s no point worrying about the end of civilisation, scanning the horizon for bombs, meteors or lunatic presidents. Whatever finishes us off will almost certainly be something most of us have never heard of, and cannot begin to understand.
Here’s something else I had no idea existed: the “skort”. This is a garment that combines a pair of shorts with a skirt. It’s a descendant of the “trouser skirt”, that voluminous garment worn by pioneering Victorian women to allow them to ride a bicycle without causing a scandal.
My six-year-old daughter asked me to buy her a skort to wear to school. Apparently, all the girls wear them – or “dance shorts” under their skirts – so that they can do cartwheels without showing their knickers.
I ordered her one from John Lewis, but it made me feel sad. Why are six-yearolds worrying about their modesty? Are they picking up on our grown-up anxieties about paedophiles, upskirting and religious modesty? Why, for that matter, do they feel the need for a feminine wisp of skirt, when a pair of shorts would be more practical? It might feel like we’re all feminists now – but has anyone told the children?
FOLLOW Jemima Lewis on Twitter @gemimsy;
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