ONLY BLOOD, TOIL, TEARS AND SWEAT

Rarely do we get a government leader who will promise us nothing but hard times. Politicians never would, even if that was all there was to promise, because they are only in the business of pretending that things will get better. 'If you vote for us, only if you vote for us, everything will be wunnerful. Read my lips.' It is only statesmen, such as Winston Churchill, the pre-eminent statesman of the twentieth century, who are brave enough to face an unpalatable truth and can inspire us to join them and face it together.

That is what we need now. Instead we have contemptible, brain-damaged politicians (who are nothing more than bureaucrats that make speeches), who will never face up to the mess the planet is in from the universal addiction to smoking fossil fuels. That requires draconian action; that requires getting off our deluded chuffs and getting rid of bad technologies; that requires dumping and outlawing fossil-fuel vehicles ASAP; that requires dumping and outlawing inefficient lighting systems; that requires outlawing companies that make planet-destroying products and sending their principals to jail. All that has to be done at high speed, so we should declare the next five years the period in which we will fix this mess as much as it can be fixed, and put the world on a war footing to achieve it.

But that won't happen. Because we are too stupid to give up burning the black stuff, and we underline that by being so inordinately stupid as to keep voting for people who have been genetically modified with the genes of a brick. They will never lift a finger while the planet goes to hell in a hand-basket.

(That was very unfair to bricks, because that GM process degraded their IQ and visionary capacity several orders of magnitude. The process was also a waste of time, because it had no measurable effect on politicians; for even though the brick genes doubled their IQs they still remained below the level of epsilon semi-morons.)

Only blood, toil, tears and sweat would avert the worst of the global catastrophe that is heading our way. We cannot live the life of Riley and fix a colossal mess at the same time.


Post-posting Footnote: After this blog was written the BBC World Service published this, and this, which are the views of James Lovelock and what came out of a recent BBC panel discussion by other scientists on his latest book.