An End of the World is Nigh sect decided that they had been vouchsafed its exact date. They called the faithful to a rally in London, so that ‘the saved of earth’ could gather for their transit to the skies. They all had bought return rail tickets.
My possibly apocryphal tale came to mind at the time of the Copenhagen Climate Change Chat-In. The world, it alleges, is facing disaster unless CO2 emissions are cut (jumbo jets much to blame).
I had expected that television would show armadas of carbon-footprint-denying sailing ships taking the delegates and advisors (15,000 in all) thronging the waterways leading to Copenhagen, that ‘salty old queen of the sea.’ No so much as a sailing dinghy in sight. Ashore so many gas-guzzling limousines were needed to ferry delegates to the Conference that the Danes asked German car-hire firms for help.
Sadly, par for the course where many climate change doom-sayers are concerned. Al Gore, whose “lm has frightened more kids than the Witch in that other fairy tale, Snow White, apparently has a permanently floodlit mansion. Tracey Emin, whose latest masterpiece abandons the unmade bed for the unproved band-wagon of climate change, sleeps with the lights on because she’s afraid of the dark – or possibly seeing one of her own compositions.
Come to think of it, we didn’t see many doom-peddling bishops peddling pushbikes when the Anglican worthies arrived at December’s Climate Change Service.
Human activity may be causing climate change, though we haven’t yet found the fossil remains of prehistoric Ryan-Air jets that put an end to the Ice Age. Yet, as we leave the Noughties for the Teenies, please, prelates, may we have a teeny few sermons on changed human hearts as well as climate change?