A Brush for the Planet

It was hot. It was very hot. It was so hot that we schoolboys were allowed to take off our ties. (Today’s schoolboys can Google “necktie”.) It was 1955 and I was 12 years old.

The heatwave, and associated severe weather events, hit all parts of the United Kingdom. Although there had been some extremely wet weather before the drought, the water table dropped, and the country’s reservoirs ran low.

The indoctrination of the young and naïve had not yet started. We, adults and children alike, took the hot weather in good part, just another hot summer. A good excuse to buy a real English Walls ice cream before Unilever got their hands on it. The Climate Change and Global Warming story had not yet been invented.

Sadly, today’s schoolchildren are not so lucky. While Walls ice cream is still sold under the name Strauss Ice Creams, our normal hot summers are being “sold” as the end of times, the end of human life on our planet. And worse, it’s all our fault. Yes, climate change, we are told, is a man-made disaster.

As an example, Stanford University has indoctrination programs aimed at both Middle school and High school children. They include catchy songs for the children to sing:
The hot gets hotter and the wet gets wetter, The sea is rising and we don’t breathe better. Greenhouse gases are trapping the heat, We need to do something, we can’t sit on our seat.

The page starts with the unproven assertion that Global Climate Change is unequivocal, and almost certainly is caused mostly by us. The Sun will be glad to see that it might be allowed to take some credit.

But we must all play our part. I will keep my petrol-fuelled car and will continue to enjoy large beef steaks but, to save the planet, I have thrown away my electric toothbrush. Only a manual brush from now on.

And those of you who did Google “necktie” will have found that it was worn to symbolize nobility, honour, and order, all somewhat lacking in society today.