Hypersonic

Unhand my patio heater, archbishop

Jeremy Clarkson
The Sunday Times. December 30, 2007

The Archbishop of Canterbury told the faithful on Christmas Day that unless human beings abandon our greed, we will be responsible for the death of the planet.

Hmm. I’m not sure that I can take a lecture on greed from a man who heads one of the western world’s richest institutions. As we huddle under a patio heater to stay warm while having a cigarette in the rain, his bishops are living in palatial splendour with banqueting halls, wondering where to invest the next billion.

And are the churches open at night as shelter for the homeless and the weak? No, they are locked lest someone should decide to redress the inequalities of western society by half-inching a candelabra and fencing it to buy Christmas presents for his kiddies.

Then we must ask how much old Rowan really understands about the implications and causes of global warming. He thinks that taking a holiday in Florida and driving a Range Rover caused the flooding in Tewkesbury this summer. But then he also believes it’s possible for a man to walk on water and feed a crowd of 5,000 with nothing more than a couple of sardines.

Hmm. Well here are some facts that Rowan might like to chew on over his fair-trade breakfast cereal. The Alps are enjoying good snowfalls this year, in much the same way that the Alps in New South Wales enjoyed healthy snowfalls last summer.

The hurricane season finished a couple of weeks ago and, contrary to all the scaremongering from Al Gore’s mates, the number of severe storms, for the second year in a row, was slightly below average.

Closer to home, Britain did not, as was predicted by the BBC’s hysterical internet news site, bake this summer under record-breaking temperatures. It was wet and soggy, much like in all the summers of my youth. And the only reason Tewkesbury flooded is because we’ve all paved our drives and built houses on the flood plains so the rainwater had nowhere else to go apart from Mrs Miggins’s front room.

In the light of all this, I would like Rowan Williams to come out from behind his eyebrows and tell us how many people have been killed by greed-induced global warming. Because even the most swivel-eyed lunatic would be hard pressed to claim it’s more than a few dozen.

Meanwhile, I reckon the number of people killed over the years by religious wars is around 809m. I tell you this, beardie. Many, many more people have died in the name of God than were killed in the name of Hitler.

Between 1096 and 1270, the Crusades killed about 1.5m. Way more than have been killed by patio heaters and Range Rovers combined. Then there was the 30 years’ war, which reduced Europe’s population by about 7.5m. And the slaughter is still going on today in Iraq and Afghanistan and Palestine and Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto was killed by a religious nut, not a homeless polar bear.

We have been told by those of a communist disposition that if we return to a life of sackcloth and potato soup (bishops excepted) and if we meet all the targets laid down by the great scientist John Prescott at Kyoto, then Britain will be a shining beacon to the world. Others will see what we have done and immediately lay down their 4x4s.

Rubbish. America and China and India will ignore our lunacy and our economic suicide and continue to embody the human spirit for self-improvement (or greed, as Rowan calls it).

No matter. Old Rowan will doubtless applaud the move. This is a man who was arrested in the antinuclear protests of the 1980s. Who refused to call the 9/11 terrorists evil and said they had serious moral goals. Who thinks that every single thing bought and sold is “an act of aggression” on the developing world. Who campaigns for gay rights but wouldn’t actually appoint a homosexual as a bishop. And who recently said in an interview that America was the bad guy and that Muslims in Britain were like the good Samaritans.

In other words, he’s a full-on, five-star, paid-up member of the loony left, so anything that prevents the middle classes from having a Range Rover and a patio heater is bound to get his vote.
If, however, he really wants to bring peace and stability to the world, if he really believes Britain can be a force for good and a shining beacon in troubled times, then I urge him to close the Church of England.

If we can demonstrate that we can survive without a church - and when you note 750,000 more people went online shopping on Christmas Day than went to church, you could argue we already do - then, who knows, maybe the mullahs and the left-footers will follow suit.

Daft? Not as daft as expecting the government in Beijing to renounce electricity because everyone in Britain has swapped their Range Rover for a mangle.

But better? Well yes. I genuinely believe we are born with a moral compass and we don’t need it reset every Sunday morning by some weird-beard communist in a dress. I am, as you may have gathered, completely unreligious, but it doesn’t stop me trying to be kind to others, and I’m never completely overwhelmed with a need to murder madmen in pulpits. Slightly overwhelmed sometimes, but never completely.

Morally, the world would be no worse if religion were abolished. Practically, it would be much, much better. And so, given the choice of which we should give up, God or the patio heater, the choice is simple.

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dOmInIX

Very true. I have quite similar views on church as institution like him.

Hypersonic

I think Clarkson makes some very valid points ....he also is quite brave to be so out spoken

It is inevitable that some (predominantly the left-wingers he is so critical of) will label him a rich, right-wing atheist redneck ....but it is difficult to find much in his article which is not true.


Western countries are huge polluters ...that is true, but there have been major steps taken over the past decades to reduce pollution greatly. I remember when the Berlin wall came down and we got to see just how much the Soviets valued the environment. Toxic waste was transported by trains across Eastern Europe in open containers with a blatant disregard for the health of people or the potential for ecological catastrophes -- and obviously, the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear power plant in Ukraine was the most poignant example of Communist negligence. This of course does not mean that the Capitalist west is without fault, but my point is, generally, the left-wing, which so often self-righteously links itself to environmentalist causes, tends to overlook the fact that Communism was extremely disregarding of the environment.

John

I find it hard to fault Clarkson...

Here I go OT but:

Rob, with respect to your thoughts on environmental disregard, I was involved in a number of large Russian pipeline projects in the 90's. Without any real regulatory mechanisms and the need to jump start the economy (with a little help from the Russian mafia), every major oil & gas corporation in North America and Europe was having a field day in Khazakstan when the wall came down. Never have I seen nor do I wish to see again, 24 heavy crude pipelines lined up side by side delivering product. Why so many? Because with only half that many the leakage was so extensive that only 50% was making it to its final destination. With the landscape and permafrost destroyed forever, there were lakes of oil everywhere. Clean-up involved burning it at regualr intervals. There were major river systems (with productive commercial fisheries) that essentially died from hydrocarbon contamination. Very distubing to see a river burn for days at a time. Somewhat like Chernobyl, the extent of fish flesh tainting was withheld from the public...The fisheries studies we carried out for the russian gov't and O & G companies were conclusive but as you might expect, found there way into the "round file". This was the worst case of environmental neglect I've ever been personally involved in. Fotunately regulatory aspects improved as economies stabilized over time. Unfortunately the environmental cost was huge.

Hypersonic

Thanks for that very interesting and disturbing information John.

I don't imagine the regulations in the former Soviet Union are much stricter now. Sadly, it is not at all surprising that western companies take advantage of such an absence of standards.