Ok, the heatwave’s over, but its not so much the heat that bothered me as the endless fucking conversations about the heat. Even as an avid collector of trivial, useless information, I’ve learned enough about ‘record temperatures’ and trends in temperature rises and fires and global warming to last… til the next heatwave. Then they won’t need to repeat any of it because we all know. And carbon emissions are to blame, there’s very little doubt, so, according to Mr Evangelical News Carbon Dude, ‘we’ must do all ‘we’ can to reduce ‘our’ emissions, end the reliance on fossil fuels and generally act responsibly in the best interests of the planet.

And I get that. It’s the ‘we’ that causes me slight concern. I’ll heat the house less, I’ll insulate, I’ll drive an electric car, if it ever arrives, which all helps. In the same way that spitting every weekend into the reservoir will help the water supply. Because there’s industry. And there’s cows (massive producers of methane gas, the worst of the greenhouse ones). And there’s planes. And…

And there’s China. India. America. The ‘producers’. The abusers. The Problem. The 3 biggest industrial nations on the planet, other than Russia who also put out a CO2 or two, have no intention of any immediate or even long-term strategy for carbon emission reduction. China alone produces 30% of the world’s emissions. Who’s going to stop that? India is poor and completely reliant on coal, which is a massive resource over there. And America… well, they adopt the same attitude to fossil fuels as they do to gun control. It’s the way its always been, it ain’t gonna change. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, blah, blah, John Wayne, Donald Trump, blah.

Maybe our little heatwave was a warning of things to come, to spur us into action. Because, even for a heat-loving sun-worshipper, the last 2 days were fucking awful. So I’ll turn off my gas boiler if China turns off its one. Or two. Or…

Happy mercifully a little cooler Wednesday

A xxxx