The winds whistling and howling outside Berkeley Mansions were nothing compared to the cyclone brewing inside the Wooster heart that unseasonably bitter March morning. Indeed, one's fairly certain that if King Lear had felt like gloomy young Bertram that particular Wednesday AM he would have challenged the winds to blow and crack their cheeks while standing in the ornate streets of Mayfair, not some newt-infested piece of shrubland in Dartmoor. But then, if poor K.L. had access to the remarkable gizmo that was currently exercising B.W.'s fingers and thumbs he would have spared poor Edgar's ears the proverbial bashing. I paused my rage-fuelled activities on Twitter for a moment to consider what an eighth century iPhone would look like when I was shaken from my reverie by a polite cough. I looked up blinking to find Jeeves standing over the bed brandishing the old eggs and b.
'Ah, Jeeves,' I said frostily, glaring at him with the annoyance one usually reserves for a child kicking the back of one's theatre seat. 'Am I to assume from the sickly aroma of fried pig carcass and boiled chicken ovulation currently invading the Wooster bedroom that my stern talk with you after returning from the Drones Club last night fell on disinterested ears?'
'On the contrary, sir,' he replied with his customary, measured bonhomie. 'I recall yesterday evening's declaration with absolute perspicuity.'
'Yes, well, perspicuous or not, Jeeves, I want to make it absolutely clear that not another piece of dead animal flesh shall pass these lips.'
'No, sir?'
'No, indeed, sir. When one thinks of those poor blighters couped up in pens no bigger than a snooker table I go quite weak'
'May one enquire if the chief architect of sir's culinary volte face will be sharing in this herbivorous demagoguery?'
'If you're referring to Bingo, absolutely, Jeeves! Well, he doesn't have much choice, really, now he's once again a slave to the quixotic spirit of l'amour - or Tabitha Earthchild, to give her her nom de activisme. She who walks in beauty like the night, of cloudless what-not and etcetera. An intersectional feminist, no-less, Jeeves, engaged in the eternal struggle for social justice necessitating the dismantling of heteronormative, colonial-patriarchal values. Jolly good luck to the little woman, I say.'
'And presumably sir has had time to reflect on the practicalities of this new-found lifestyle choice since he was put to bed last night in a state of advanced inebriation-?'
'Well, I've certainly 'educated myself' on the wider implications, if that's what you're driving at, Jeeves. Or rather, Bingo filled me in between Jägerbombs. Do you realise how much CS gas it generates transporting what's left of old Daisy, Mr. Porker and Tinkerbell to Smith's Butchers? Head-spinning stuff!'
'Tinkerbell, sir?'
'It struck me as a good name for a chicken, Jeeves. I was toying with Henry, but it seems rather disrespectful when one considers Agincourt, good old C. of E. and, of course, the motor car.'
'If I may correct sir's entirely fallacious but wholly understandable blunder, the first automobile - or 'Fardier à vapeur', as it was then called - was in fact invented by a Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot in 1769, and not our colonial cousin Mr. Ford.'
'A Frenchman, Jeeves?'
'So his place of birth in the Void-Vacon region of north-eastern France would indicate, sir.'
'Well, I never,' I said, trying to take in the enormity of this revelation. 'Just think, Jeeves - if Napoleon had used these F.V. contraptions at Tarutino or Waterloo the course of history would have been altered.'
'Alas, sir, it took some time for Monsieur Cugnot's invention to catch on.'
'Well, it's a bally shame it caught on at all!' I snapped, Jeeves' observation handily placing me back on my train of thought again. 'All these infernal motorcars filling the air with noxious gas - it's a crime against nature, Jeeves. Do you realise the Earth is boiling? That we've passed the point of no return? And unless we drastically reduce our cardboard emissions and adopt renewable energies all life on the planet will be wiped out in twelve years' time?'
'I take it sir is referring to carbon emissions?'
'Yes, those as well.'
'Well, one need only point to the underreported phenomenon of global greening to see that the promise of a barren, uninhabitable, apocalyptic future is wildly exaggerated, sir.'
'Global greening, Jeeves?'
'Yes, sir. A remarkable occurrence which has led to areas of forest comparable to a continent approximately twice the size of the United States mainland emerging over the last thirty-three years. According to studies, this unprecedented increase in the growth of plants and trees is chiefly fuelled by carbon dioxide. The slight rise in CO₂ emissions over the last century from 0.03 per-cent to 0.04 per-cent has thus provided ready food access for plants while at the same time preventing them rapidly losing water from their stomata. As a consequence, greening appears to have spread to arid landscapes previously unable to support vegetation, such as Western Australia and the African Sahel.'
I looked at him for a moment in bewilderment, wondering if he had finished his truly extraordinary recall of facts that were as alien to me as a camel is to a polar bear.
'That's all very well, Jeeves,' I finally replied, falteringly at first but with renewed gusto as the Wooster brain kicked back to life. 'But haven't you forgotten something?'
'Sir?'
'Good grief, the animals, man! Surely the forests drawing in all that CO₂ is going to choke the poor little perishers? Never more shall we see the nimble-footed chimpanzee swing his plucky way through the jungle, or the delicate wood vole nesting in fallen twigs if all those horrid emissions are being sucked up by the trees.'
'Quite the opposite, sir. The carbon absorption produces oxygen, sustaining life. With reforestation and conservation, tree coverage has increased by 2.24 million square kilometres over the last forty-two years, creating a stable home for our bestial friends. And while it is undeniable that human beings have regrettably brought about the extinction of a number of species, this trend is gradually reversing. Over the last five hundred years, Gregorian calendar notwithstanding, just nine species of birds and mammals have shuffled off this mortal coil. Overfishing of the oceans naturally remains a problem, as indeed is plastic pollution in the oceans, sewage spilling into rivers, habitats being fragmented by urban growth and so on, but with careful husbandry and increasing awareness these trends are happily proving reversible.'
There was another brief pause, after which he added 'sir' as a much-welcomed full-stop.
'And the reliance on fossil fuels-?'
'Far more efficient than wind turbines and solar panels, sir. And if one may expatiate upon this matter with one final but paramount observation, the fanatical scramble towards net zero in the Western world borders on redundancy compared to the consumption of coal, oil and gas in potential superpower countries such as India and China. While they will enjoy an ever-increasing standard of living, we will find our daily comfort at the mercy of barely functional heat pumps, power shortages and an accelerating cost of living crisis.'
'You surprise me, Jeeves,' I replied archly, doing up the top button on my pyjama collar to underline my quiet outrage. 'I wouldn't have expected climate denialism from a dashed clever chap such as yourself.'
'I prefer to think of it as empirical scepticism, sir. I haven't discounted the rise in global temperature, however small - merely expressed a Pyrrhonic view that the narrative disseminated by government agencies and mainstream media outlets does not hold the monopoly on truth.'
'Well, in future, perhaps you should pay less attention to what this Python fellow says and place just a dash more trust in the wisdom of your superiors and betters.'
'Very good, sir.'
'However, I will add on a conciliatory note that your argument about the conservation and, one assumes, protection of wildlife, has made me consider that the occasional rasher of bacon, poached egg, lamb cutlet or sirloin steak will do no harm. After all, I am but one man, Jeeves, and therefore unlikely to drive any of our dumb friends to extinction single-handed.'
'I'll prepare a fresh breakfast for you, sir,' he replied, the faintest hint of a smile lighting up his fine, chiselled face.
