The Weathervane Points to ‘Wimpy’

I am on the record innumerable times expressing my liking of cold weather. You can wear fashionable clothes and have open fires, I have said. Having now been in France and England in the run up to winter — note: not actually in winter — I can attest to a profound change of mind. Global warming has clearly been inadequate. How anybody could believe that another two degrees celsius wouldn’t be helpful is beyond me. I would settle for nothing less than five. Even then thermal underwear would be prioritised on my shopping list.

The loss of a few miles of coastal territory to Father Neptune would be a small price to pay, particularly as numbers of those who would have to pick up sticks are global-warming alarmists whose predilection for the hedonistic pleasures of ocean views clearly outweighs their precautionary principles. Serves them right, I say.

But it is not climate change itself of which I want to speak but the pernicious effect it appears to be having on seemingly unrelated phenomena. Of course, I can’t prove that climate change is behind it all, but surely it would be too much of a coincidence if it were not?

Some effects are self-evident. Pass a group of school children these days and, once you see through their rowdy, irksome and irreverent behaviour, you can spot the terror on their cherubic faces. UNICEF – as reliable a source as you ever likely to get – pinned it down. Children are living in mortal fear of climate change. Remember we only had to worry about the bogeyman in our own childhoods.

Climate change, like a thief in the night, has robbed children of their insouciance and optimism. A survey reported by the BBC, also of undoubted reliability and objectivity, suggested that kids were more afraid of climate change than of not finding a boyfriend or girlfriend. Fear indeed! So there it is; one of those phenomena, as plain as a pikestaff for those not blinded by scepticism and denialism.

Another phenomenon not so obvious but of particular concern to half the population is emasculation. You might think that this is a long bow. Sure, the emasculation of Western man is fairly obvious. I personally go around apologising for everything, even when it isn’t my fault. Moreover, I have noticed, through a fog of wine and advancing years, a totally unaccountable declining desire for the contrary gender. None of this is remotely explicable; unless, of course, I plug in the explanatory variable of climate change.

Among the political elite, look at Barack Obama genuflecting (lower than a curtsey) to foreign monarchs of dubious standing and ingratiatingly appeasing the tyrants in Iran. Then we have David Cameron and Nick Clegg and pitted against them Ed Miliband. They all might be honourable chaps and brave, for all I know, but they are, shall we say, on the effeminate side in their manner; more like French poodles than British bulldogs. And our Kevin, let’s face it, was a prissy kind of chap; not totally at home with a beer in hand.

But is climate change the culprit; that is the question? There is, in fact, little doubt. It is a well known fact that stress causes a drop in sperm count and what could be more stressful than climate change. We know what it is doing to our kids. It is also a well-known fact that warm weather is not good for male nether regions and again lowers sperm count.

Cole Porter was spookily prescient about global warming and he hit the nail on the head. Recall his inimitable words:

I’d like to fool with my baby tonight
break ev’ry rule with my baby tonight
but pillow you’ll be my baby tonight
cause it’s too darn hot
it’s too darn hot.

The evidence is building. Tony Abbott is the clincher. No-one could ever accuse Mr Abbott of being effeminate. I have it on unreliable authority, for example, that he used to soak his hands in vinegar to prepare them for striking walls in his student days. Yet, even Abbott appears to be succumbing to the emasculating effects of climate change.

Given an invitation by Andrew Bolt to lambast the ABC — the Abjectly Biased Comintern — he meekly said that he was “not in the business of making unnecessary enemies … my job is to try to be as appealing as I can at all times”.  Let’s face it, Mr Abbott, short of donning sackcloth and ashes, apologizing profusely for being a misogynist monster, resigning and agreeing to take counseling from Malcolm Fraser, there is nothing you can do to appeal to the chattering classes and their personal broadcaster. So don’t try.

Then we’ve had the PM passively bending over backwards to accommodate the ridiculous Indonesian hissy-fitting over a bit of eavesdropping. Fight the effects of climate change. Be the old Tony Abbott. Tell them were to stick their foreign aid. Wait a minute? Don’t we give them aid?