Brown Couch
The Artsworld Canyon experience
Today Brown Couch takes a look at Climate Change. With droughts in the Southeast and a hot summer approaching, the UK Government has released a new pamphlet entitled "What we'll about CO2". This pamphlet aims to teach the general public about the Government's CO2 reduction program that is being implemented over the next ten years. Carbon dioxide is a major greenhouse gas directly linked with rising temperatures and as such, the Government is keen to reduce emissions.
The fourteen-page full colour glossy booklet covers a number of new schemes aiming to reduce CO2 emissions - the most practical of which is the introduction of the "Carbon Warehouses". The Brown Couch met up with the minister responsible for the idea - Thomas Bradbury, Underling Secretary of the Environment - to ask about his inspiration for the scheme. "For the past 10 years everyone's been talking about the 'carbon problem'. I was asked to come up with an idea for getting rid of carbon dioxide and this was the only one that was accepted. Carbonating rivers and banning people breathing both got knocked back by the House of Lords." Plans have been drawn up for 17 gargantuan carbon warehouses to be built across the country and each one will store two billion cubic litres of CO2 in an attempt to clean up the atmosphere. Attached to each huge warehouse will be a canning plant in which carbon dioxide is extracted from the atmosphere and locked in steel drums. Each drum, about the size of a dustbin, will be welded shut, labelled and placed in a vast rack in the warehouse. From the first day of operations, each canning plant will operator continuously until, after six years, the warehouse is full. Full warehouses will then be buried under 120,000 tonnes of crushed concrete, thus solving the carbon problem.
Another measure in the booklet is to simply rename "carbon dioxide" to "good gas". The Government is currently signed up to numerous international treaties - including the Kyoto treaty and the Milton Keynes accord - that commit the country to lower carbon dioxide emissions. By changing the name of the gas, the Government instantly meets all its targets and becomes a world leader in environmental policy. Methane will be renamed "happy gas" and CFCs will become known, for the text-message generation, as GR8s.
The Government's booklet was commissioned three years ago when there was large public concern about climate change. Since then, however, the climate of public opinion has changed and people have warmed to the idea of hotter summers. The Brown Couch spoke to some summer sunbathers in Hyde Park about their views: "I read in the paper that in twenty years, Britain could have a Mediterranean climate. I say "Why not five years?". I'm doing my part - I already drive a 4x4 Land Cruiser and always choose to fly in preference to taking the train. Hotter summers and mild winters sound ideal to me.".
In the US, people have already started taking advantage of new opportunities presented by a changed climate. "People are now seeing global warming as a positive thing." said Kay Carter, head of the L.A. based firm "Cancer Designs". "With the thinning of the Ozone layer, we've seen a niche market open up. A lot of our clients have had tattoos and piercing and are looking for something new. We help them to develop a personalised cancer growth by providing customers with a stencilled sun-screen showing their chosen design. They then have to lie in the sun with the screen placed on their bare skin for around 30 hours total. At the end of that time, they will have a blistered, cancerous growth in their chosen shape - and look fantastic! For extra money, we provide cancer-inducing creams that reduce the time they have to spend on the beach. The most powerful cream we provide has a sun factor of negative 50."
So it seems like Britain is taking a leading role in combating climate change. The Brown Couch can only wonder if it might not be better to sit back and enjoy the ride. We stand at a cross-roads deciding between two paths. They both lead to the end of civilisation, but one involves an oil-fuelled 50 year party and the other doesn't.
