Murky Emissions

The Glorious Successor, who has done so much to divert British society away from outdated weapons systems, lunatic surveillance projects, oversized airports and radioactive white elephants, has been wagging the famous New New Labour finger at a gaggle of environment ministers which has congealed underneath an umbrella called the Major Economies Forum. It seems our own Minister for Talking about Getting Someone to Do Something About the Environment was too impressive to waste on such a gathering.

The Glorious Successor informed the rapt assembly that "no retrospective global agreement in some future period" could undo the damage from unchecked emissions growth; and that "by then it will be irretrievably too late", as opposed to retrievably too late. There is good news, of course: "an extra 1.8bn people - a quarter of the world's population - could be short of water by 2080", and thus may well constitute a new, extensive and rather highly incentivised consumer group. Better yet, the changes will not be confined to the lesser breeds: "in Britain we face the prospect of more frequent droughts and a rising wave of floods", which might help to distract our children and grandchildren from whatever tattered remnants of their birthright a future government may see fit to snatch from them.

The Glorious Successor flattered himself shamelessly by referring to "my fellow leaders", which may have raised a smile or two; and he recycled his predecessor's messianic "thousand days to prepare for a thousand years" into the appropriately shorter, cheaper and ungainlier "fewer than 50 days to set the course of the next 50 years and more". Finally, with near-Blairite meaningfulousity: "We cannot compromise with the earth, we cannot compromise with the catastrophe of unchecked climate change, so we must compromise with one another," the Glorious Successor perorated; while the American special envoy, having listened carefully to someone or other, said that it was all up to China, India, Brazil and South Africa.