Security at Heathrow can relax: I’m a climate sceptic.

Or I’d like to be a climate sceptic, because I hate all this climate-change panic shit, and most of the people involved revolt me, their politics can’t help but sicken. But I’m not really a climate sceptic because that would take a willingness to pretend to understand the science involved, and I’m not willing to make some kind of massive investment in time which will never ever reach a point where I can really feel I know anything for certain. So basically, until the waters start to rise in my living room, I’m not worried. Probably not even then.

Despite all the drugs, I’m old enough and have a memory long enough to recall the last fourteen eco-catastrophe predictions, all supposedly based on pure science, usually centered on oil or population or pollution or some combination of these, all panic-stricken, all forgotten now, all crap. That this one has been picked out to become the big panic of the day isn’t enough to capture my emotions: I still care more about any given Palestinian killed than I do about climate change. I’m still more scared of running out of milk than I am of climate change.

As such I’m not really a climate sceptic. I’m more climate nihilist. I just don’t care, the idea of massive climate change doesn’t scare me, actually it’s sort-of exciting. A science fiction scenario to live out. People have an enthusiasm and willingness to believe, not just the climate change mantra obviously being pushed by fractions of capital and states for their own reasons, but the most extreme prophecies of doom: 25 metre rises in sea level by Hanukkah, the land of sixty percent of the population gone the way of Atlantis, dogs and cats living together. I think this enthusiasm and willingness to believe has something of this same pleasure. Admit it: you’re all looking forward to the disaster. Probably hoping for a peak oil crisis any day too. Now that’s a libidinal economy.

How disappointing it always is when the world doesn’t end and you have to go back to work again on Monday.