Please, Sir, I Want Some More

“The evening arrived; the boys took their places.  The master, in his cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons.  The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other, and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbors nudged him.  Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity: ‘Please, sir, I want some more.’

A number of my fellow Englishmen have completely lost their little grey-cells, have rendered themselves mentally unfit to advise others as to their fates.  First, climate chief, Lord Stern of Brentford has urged the world’s  population to turn completely vegetarian in order to reduce its carbon footprint on the planet:  “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources” he claims.  “Direct methane from cows and pigs is a significant source of greenhouse gases.  Methane is 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a global warming gas.”  Well, if Lord Stern of Brentford decides to live on some bean-based diet, he will expel quite an amount of methane gas  to the ongoing discomfort of his close colleagues as well as to the pollution of the planet.

Not to be outdone in this surge to save the planet, Jonathon Porritt (I swear that his surname is a code for ‘Porridge’) a leading ‘green’ adviser to Britain’s Labour Government, demands from Copenhagen that the UK population must fall from 60 million to 30 million if the country wants to feed itself ‘sustainably’, by which I understand him to mean through an abandonment of all meat products. He does not spell out the precise manner in which the British population is to be culled, but the numbers alone  are enough to make Adolf Hitler look like Mother Teresa.

Well, I have some information for Stern and Porridge. Most Englishmen, like me,  are meat-eaters who will not sacrifice our Sunday roast. The very thought of a succulent slice or three of perfectly roasted beef, accompanied by horseradish sauce and a dash of Grey Poupon,  nestling between a couple of roast potatoes, perhaps, though not essentially accompanied by a small portion of sweet peas, and deliciously moistened by a well-seasoned gravy,  is almost enough to divert me from writing this column.  Most Englishmen, like me, are self-seekers who value their lives and liberties, who view ourselves a cut above the rest of the animal species, and who intend to enjoy our three score years and ten plus whatever more we can squeeze in.  We are certainly not about to enter Porridge’s gas chambers in order to save the planet from global warming.  In any event, think of the carbon dioxide that would  be pumped into the atmosphere as furnaces  burned the remains of 30 million bodies; and not the emaciated bodies of gruel suppers like Stern and Porridge, but the properly proportioned bodies of long-time meat-eaters.

If  Stern and Porridge truly want  to save the planet, then let them slake down some  weak gruel before they make that last great sacrifice and depart this Earth to become  beckoning Idaho potatoes in the sky. Perhaps they will demonstrate that high quality of leadership that will encourage the tens of thousands of  their supporters currently imprinting their carbon footprints all over Denmark, to follow suit and, in a most honorable and noble gesture, relieve the planet forever of their methane and carbon dioxide emissions.  I suspect, however that, like the Prince of Denmark, they  will hold back from such a  sleep of death,  perchance to dream.

Tags: carbon and methane footprints, global warming, population-culling, shift from meat to vegetables