The end of the world is…

…Nigh Very Likely.

Finally, the proof environmentalists across the world were waiting for. The damning evidence is written for all to see. Climate change is ‘very likely’, fairly likely, to be human-made. Possibly. Perhaps. Maybe.

Television and billboard advertisements across the country tell us ‘it could be you’ who wins the lottery. We have channel upon channel of auction satelite television channels encouraging us to play the odds to buy a combination toaster/pencil sharpener at a knock-down price. Apparently if your partner buys Cadbury’s Milk Tray for you, he may be committed enough to ski to your aid across a snow-covered wilderness. That’s if he can find any snow left on the planet.

The country seems so obsessed with gambling and super casinos at the moment, that science too has been taken over by probability rather than empirical evidence. Stataticians will now be hosting conference on polar ice-caps. Men with casio pocket-calculators will stand in front of the world leaders, talking about a 0.2 chance of ice-cap loss. John McCirick, meanwhile, will stand behind them on a hologramatic projector doing his hand-dance giving men in mackintosh coats in Ladbrookes the inside take on where they should be placing their money. Air conditioning companies probably.

I’d like to think I’m a fairly environmentally minded chap. I stood beside Europe’s biggest glacier in Skaftafell, Iceland, and this summer vowed to be more green. I drive a diesel car, which is lower in emissions and has better fuel economy and, because more people nowadays drive diesels and the government wants more cash, pay more in fuel duty as a result. I spend time making sure my recycling wheeled bin, the corresponding recycling crate, and the recycling bag are put out on time and with all the relevant waste sorted correctly. I ride a bicycle. I don’t hunt cute foxes on my days off or shoot colourful pheasants, and I try to avoid supermarket groceries because they are wrapped in too much packaging made in sweat-shop factories staffed by koala bears on a minimum wage.

I even like Al Gore. I’m a big fan of the US, but normally shout at their politicians when they appear on television. They tend to look like they all share a gene pool with John Wayne, with their wide-shouldered, arms-away-from-the-side stance. His film, Al’s that is not The Duke’s, brought the environment to the fore.

I’m so environmentally friendly that I don’t mind the one-size-fits-all justification of global warming for taking money from my pocket. Fuel duty, airport tax, road tax, gas and electricity bills, income tax. It’s only a matter of time before His Tonyness comes out and says fixed penalty speeding fines are going up because people who drive too fast are using extra petrol and are killing baby hedgehogs in Australia.

Yes we’re harming the planet, but if all you’ve got is a report concluding we’re ‘likely’ to be causing global warming you’d be better off keeping quiet for a little while.

It’s “between a 66-90%” ‘certainty’ we’re harming the environment? Every week millions play the lottery with a 14million to one chance. They’re hardly going to worry about playing the climate-change lottery – they have a better chance of winning. A better chance that we’re not harming the environment, and their expensive property that stands alongside the Thames won’t become a homage to Pompeii should a polar bear make a piece of ice melt by breathing on it after a takeaway curry.
This report is hardly going to make everyone start recycling tomorrow. It’s amnunition for both sides. A warship firing misiles in both directions. There’s a fair chance we’re killing the Earth, but now we have a “44-10%” chance we shouldn’t worry about putting that paper in the black bin rather than the green one.

There’s a lovely obituary to The Beautiful South on the BBC Website. Forget this environmental report until the statisticians have a better bet on offer, and take Paul Heaton’s warning to heart – “The world won’t end in darkness, it’ll end in family fun. With a coca-cola cloud cloud behind a Big Mac Sun”.