Preppers and deniers

There's things I don't understand...

...too many to think about listing, but there's some new ones...

...for example:

Why relax planning laws on building in national parks and areas of outstanding beauty, just when huge areas of land are under water, and more progressive nations are recognising the need to preserve natural wetlands to absorb the inevitable additional water? Why relax those planning laws when there are, across the EU, 11,000,000 empty properties? Sufficient vacant real estate to house all Europe's homeless twice over?

Why the fuss about Scotland wanting to go their own way? The vote won't come down to impassioned pleas or well-reasoned arguments, it'll be an inevitable two-finger salute at remote rule by Westminster career politicians from rich families, public schools, and oxbridge. It's like asking the characters in an Irving Welsh novel whether they're going to side with their mates on the Hibs terraces, or the knobs swigging Bollinger in a private box at Murrayfield.

Preppers

BLISS says it's best not to know some stuff. She's got a point. It is probably somewhere between 'best' and 'easiest' not to know some stuff. It's probably most expedient, or most practical, in some cases. There's also forewarned, forearmed, and informed decision-making.

There's that thing about a feeling of impending doom overwhelming heart attack event victims before the attack event. Now, BLISS regularly calls me the 'A' word, and I must admit, watching 'The Bridge' I did understand the suggested Asperger's suffering character's response:

- Are you listening?

- Yes.

- Only normally people say 'yeah' or 'uh huh' or indicate that they're listening.

- We're in the same car. How couldn't I hear what you're saying?

I have to admit to that. I have regular “are you there” questions down the mobile when, frankly, I've not spoken because the other person hasn't come up for air, gone on for ages, presumably breathing through their arse, and I've not interrupted their flow. There's coping and hiding mechanisms, but throwing people off their flow just to let them know you're still there is, frankly, rude, in my opinion.

Anyway, it's odd how so many refuse to pick up on the end of days. It isn't down to empathy, but down to statistics and observations. It's down to the fact that we're already going to have a 110 mm to 160 mm rise in sea level, monsoon and drought, by 2030, guaranteed, unless we exceed targets. We allow countries to buy carbon allowances from elsewhere disregarding local effects. Politicians think in four year (at best) terms, and frankly, Mr Mainwearing, we're all properly doomed.

So, the preppers are prepared. They have a website, they have bunkers in their gardens, they stockpile tinned food. Just as the nuclear, guaranteed mutual destruction, concrete fall-out shelter goes out of fashion, the climate-change defence system comes in. They share best practice and ways to survive when the water levels rise and the month-long storms arrive. They're the opposite to climate change deniers, I suppose. Be prepared. Dib, dib, dob, ging-gang-gooly, and all that.