There can hardly be an adult in the UK who is not aware of the parlous state of the public finances, so it almost beggars belief that Gordon Brown should be throwing even more money around at the Copenhagen slugfest.From his original £800 million, he has now upped the ante to £1.5 billion as the "British" contribution to an EU fund "intended to help poorer countries to cut their carbon emissions."
Like a destitute gambler living off borrowed money knowing that the roof is going to fall in tomorrow, the man is throwing money around as if it no longer had any meaning or value.
Incomprehensibly, on the brink of bankruptcy, Brown's offer makes us, British taxpayers, the largest contributor to this ridiculous fund, leaving France and Germany trailing with offers of around £1.2 billion each to the EU fund, which will be worth around £6.5 billion in all.
One thus cannot help but take the view that there is a pathological morbidity in this reckless impulse to spend other peoples' money – money which as yet does not exist and had to be earned by the efforts of real people, all to be thrown away on such an empty, pointless gesture.
Thus, while we have been arguing that the warmist creed has taken on the attributes of a religion, as far as it affects politicians like Brown – and his many fellow travellers – the behaviour is symptomatic more of a disease, a mental illness.
However, rarely is mental illness infectious, yet the plague which is affecting Brown shows signs of having spread so widely that it has become an epidemic, leading many otherwise rational people to obsess endlessly over an issue without substance, without good evidence to sustain it, and of a nature that – even if it was a problem – is insoluble by the means which are being devised to counter it.
Perhaps these people are being attacked by a new kind of virus, one which rots the particular part of the brain which controls judgement and perspective, leaving them prey to any wild passing notion, causing them to indulge in the irrational behaviour we are seeing.
If the disease was not so damaging to the common weal, one could almost feel pity for those afflicted, but such is its malign effect that the healthy are damaged to as great an extent as the victims.
However, if disease it is, then clearly the processes of reasoned argument are of little avail. For such an illness, we need a treatment, a miracle cure even – otherwise we may all succumb. And, if we do, it could become, as a man once said of BSE, "worse than AIDS".
The first step can only be to recognise the phenomenon with which we are dealing – not a religion but a disease. Ironically, if this was an animal disease, a selective cull might be in order. But if that option is not open, then the hunt for an antidote to this climate obsession virus would be a good next move.
CLIMATEGATE THREAD
