Cod and Chips, Please

Autumn here in Cheshire is beautiful. The leaves rain from the trees like a golden, dizzying, decaying blizzard of reds, greens and bronzes; the horse chestnuts fill up the gutters and the sky is a cold, steely cerulean blue. It's got that wonderful balance of warmth and brisk chill that I love. It's by far the best season - until the rainclouds roll in. Since winters in England are generally fairly dry, rain is not actually that common a sight; but the gloomy combination of dark skies and lower temperatures means it feels like the world is just one continuous weather front. If I had my way then it would constantly be September 29th. However, if I had my way, the world would be a lot different.

Only about 15% of my brain is sensible. Thankfully it's that 15% that I use to cook, take exams, cross roads, join Greenpeace and drive cars with; the other 85% though, is a different story. The first segment tells me that climate change is akin to apocalyptic catastrophe, that until electoral reform is brought in universal suffrage will be defanged, that child labour standards in the third world are appalling, that the Daily Mail et al are a mockery to the freedom of speech, and that the BNP are a disgusting, putrid, vile stain on British democracy. I could go on. However, the majority of my mind tells me otherwise. Knowing the aforementioned facts, it tends to warp their significance slightly, in a savagely cynical yet undeniably amusing way. I mean, oil. We should probably start to cycle everywhere, plant a tree everyday and stop importing our apples from New Zealand or the Arctic or wherever they come from. However, I happen to like oil.

Oil is great! Without oil we wouldn't have any lights on, or be able to fly airplanes, and James Bond would have a really hard job blowing up Blofeldt's base with a single, well placed shot. It has so many uses, we'd be stuck without it - we went to war for it, for heaven's sake. And as a nation, we have a history of invading places for things we need; Clive of India subjugated an entire subcontinent just for tea. Oil deserves more respect than you ungrateful sods attach to it. You want to just leave it there?! It's expensive stuff! You wouldn't just leave your television in the middle of the Iraqi desert, would you?

I think, that there's no point in going cold turkey when (metaphorically speaking) there's lots of freshly slaughtered birds waiting to be eaten hot. What's the point? The Earth has already (probably) gone over the tipping-point with regards to the C02 balance in the atmosphere; the fact that our climate will begin to morph over the next century is now, almost certainly, unstoppable. And even if that watershed moment has not yet been reached, the United States and China and Russia and France and all those rednecks in Texas won't ever reach a meaningful agreement. We all love cars, holidays, carrots, bananas, cheap toys and tanks too much to give them up. So I propose we hold a massive party in the middle of say, Macclesfield Forest. Not just any party in a forest; an oil-party. Giant 40ft speakers will be powered by incredibly inefficiant oil-generators, the fireworks will have petroleum instead of gunpowder inside, diesel will run black in the rivers and giant faucets and taps will pour kerosene down the hill so that we can make a massive oily rainbow. Everyone coming must be made to leave all their incandescant lightbulbs on and their televisions running all week.

It'll be brilliant. And when the dawn breaks, we'll have no oil left. At a point in the midst of our bleary-eyed, petroleum-induced hangover, we'll realise it's all gone. No nitrogen oxide to make our eyes sting and our lungs hurt when exhaust fumes are spewed from an articulated lorry, no fish getting poisoned because some tosser was playing with petrol too close to the garden pond. No more boy-racers getting minced in their hatchbacks trying to emulate Vin Diesel and no more supertankers nicked by Somalian upstarts who reckon they're Blackbeard the Pirate. Sure, the climate might get fucked; who wants mediocre weather anyway? I'm all for a hurricane season in Blackpool if it means we get a nice summer once in a while. And once the oil is burnt up, we can start rebuilding civilisation with with windmills and solar panels and hydroelectrics and tidal power, and in general make a nice little utopia for ourselves.

*Having just watched End of the Line, I was shocked to learn that by 2048 - when I'll be 56 - there will be no fish left. None. We will have eaten them all. So gobble all the sushi you can while there's still time!