Further to any previous examples of media-driven hysteria – surrounding excessive use of safety equipment, the right foods to eat, best cars to drive and of course, the classiest clothes to wear – is possibly the most controversially polarising topic the modern world has ever seen.

According to what media broadcasts will have you believe, Global Warming is a progressive phenomenon which has been taking place for some years now and which is caused by excess carbon dioxide thus pollution collecting under our earth’s atmosphere therefore the only way to rectify the issue is to live more ecologically friendly lifestyles…

Super. If that were true we can damn sure of one thing: the human race is boned. This truism is due to one other basic truth – the greater first world population is driven by one thing and one thing alone: currency.

For instance, there is no way that one giant corporation will become more energy efficient thereby lowering its net profit margins when the other giant corporation just down the street isn’t bothering to make an effort to reduce its emissions thereby maintaining its profits margins.

…Just for fun I would like the group of researchers responsible for bringing the people all this fabulous advice on how we should be banding together to save the world to conduct a different study – ask all the major companies across Europe, Asia, and America which among them would be willing to take a voluntary financial hit in an effort to benefit the environment, if no others were willing to do the same.

Fortunately the noxious gases coming as an immediate by-product of our hectic consumer lifestyles isn’t really the issue at all; it’s certainly a part of it, yes, but the crux of the problem is actually much more straightforward, yet decidedly more difficult to remedy than that. I don’t know what group of ecology researchers were paid to try and scare the world into lowering their respective carbon footprints by throwing around warnings of an uncomfortably warm and watery Armageddon, but either they are genuinely blind, or they’re a bunch of duplicitous wankers.

Here’s a question to which even the most uninformed among us ought to know the answer: what basic gas do people puff out?

Here’s another one for that same group: are people cold or warm-blooded?

This next one’s getting technical so don’t feel bad if you start gleaning more than you’re imparting: what is the current world population?

Same advice applies for this next one: what was the world population in 1950?

Last one: what about 1900 or earlier?

Alright, hold your breath and relax. Currently, there are around 7 billion in the world. Now look at this: in 2000 there were around 6 billion. 1950 we had half that at 3 billion. 1900, a little less at 2 billion; 1800, it was holding firm at 2 billion also, and prior to that, well, that’d be about as accurate as the shit they feed you on TV.

I told you to hold your breath before because carbon dioxide is in fact a relaxant – not the end of all that’s good in the world, a relaxant – which is why people who breathe too much are generally frantic and often prone to meltdown. Anyway, the point is that there are a great many more warm-bodied, living, breathing, carbon-dioxide-expelling people on earth than there ever has been. World population growth has fallen into a big old J Curve and right now it’s on the vertical stretch. The reasons for this are obvious: on top of the effects of exponential reproduction, of course in the good ol’ days a person’s longevity hence the overall mortality rate was composed of indeed worrisome numbers.

Between 18 and 1900 the population was more or less static – for every birth, seemingly there was a death. This makes the hypothetical outcome to the plight of Global Warming alarming simple: unless the world is able get back to a 1:1 birth/death ratio the globe will continue to heat and as always, Armageddon will be imminent.

So, who’s concerned about cancer now? Seven billion warm-blooded bodies and counting; all puffing carbon dioxide…

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Weir Boned

Photography by Pip U Leighten