Nobody here but us chickens

So Donald Trump has pulled out of Paris; the climate change agreement, not Ms Hilton, although, you know, he has form. According to some the world will soon, literally, be engulfed in flames. The EU has stopped just short of branding the USA a pariah nation and imposing sanctions, but you can bet that has nothing to do with saving the planet and everything to do with continuing trade. Trump’s decision is, of course, also to do with money and while the world condemns him, governments are all going to watch keenly for signs of economic upturns at which point expect others to follow suit, if in less dramatic fashion.

You can guarantee, however, that grass roots protest will ensue with hippies making Washington DC look untidy, anti-frackers churning up rural areas as they hold ‘peace vigils’ and the like and in an echo of the self-destructive instincts of some of Britain’s high profile Remainers, signed-up climate change scientists will take to the skies to fly to fragile exotic ecosystems where they will generate enough hot air to melt the ice caps, just to show how wrong Trump is and how much they care.

And in the background, of course, conspiracy theorists will abound. Look out for increased chemtrail hysteria activity, every drop of rain, or lack of it, being claimed as a direct result of yesterday’s announcement, rapidly rising sea levels to be widely broadcast... only for those reports to be retracted as the tide goes back out again. And the Sun headline ‘Phew, what a scorcher!’ to be put on standby for every edition. The world will go mad for a while and then everybody will calm down and forget about it.

Of course, the largest stakes to play for are the vested interests of the numerous committees, councils, research grantees and paid consultants in what has become a global industry. Not so much save the planet as save the jobs of the professionally concerned. Many children are betting their future on being able to continue playing make-believe long into adulthood as they convince themselves and each other of the spiralling dangers in a positive feedback loop which makes survival-fear a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom and gloom. There is a serious danger of climate ‘scientist’ over-supply in the near future and some may be questioning the long-term viability of being a Climate Cassandra.

Fortunately, forecasting disaster and then profiting from advising how to avoid it is a transferable skill these days; every industry is looking for the silver bullet to fix everything and will carry on paying for quack cures long after all reason has left the building. You can find the quackery of expert consultants in every walk of life. Too many low-paid migrant workers? Open the borders! Too much bureaucracy? Convene a select committee! Too many laws? Legislate! But what about the chicken problem, I hear you ask?

Farmer Brown’s chickens began to quarrel, Cooped up because of avian flu, they started to peck and wound each other, much like the uneasy internecine hostilities of the crazy coalition of the left. Many of them were dying, so the upset farmer hurried to a consultant, and asked for a solution to his problem. “Add baking-powder to their food,” said the consultant, “It will calm them down.”

After a week Farmer Brown was once more at the consultant’s office,explaining that nothing had changed and was there another way? The consultant said “Add apple juice to their drinking water. The attacks will stop, for sure.” But of course, no such change came about and a week later the farmer, now distraught, was back once again. “My chickens are still quarrelling. Do you have some more advice?” The consultant sat him down and answered “Of course I can give you as much advice as you can pay for, but the real question is whether you still have any chickens left to save.”