Sydney: “Well, Reg, have you had a chance to review the climate report that was released last month?”
Reginald: “I leave that to you and those scientists you insist on hiring. I suppose you mean well, but I still find it disappointing that you cling to this tarbaby. Certainly, you divested any interests you have in facilities and businesses at risk from rising sea levels?”
Syd: “Long ago. Of course. But …”
What global warming?
Reg: “But what? How many times do we have to go through this? Remember five years ago, when I told you that no way in Hell were our fellow citizens and taxpayers going to put up with the lowered standard of living that addressing the climate change thing has to demand?”
Syd: “Um, yes …”
Reg: “Was I right, or was I right?!?”
Syd: “Sigh.”
Top: “40 cents more at the pump …”
Bottom: “2 degrees hotter across the planet …”
Reg: “And not just in our country. In case you missed the protests in France over the increase in gasoline prices. No doubt something that the politicians tried to impose on the citizenry because of the climate change garbage.”
Syd: “I suppose, if Mr Macron doesn’t wish to vanish into the wilderness like Mr Obama did …”
Reg: “… he will learn to listen to what his citizens really want, instead of what some of the noisy ones say they want. Precisely! Especially given the growth of the economy now that we’ve got political leaders in the USA we so dearly love who do just that. Namely, listen. To real people, not hypocritical useless eggheads. Like I hope your science employees are not.”
Syd: “They are customer-centered and profit-focused, like all the others. As they need to be.”
Reg: “Good. People want stuff. They are going to push for stuff, and more stuff, until it is proven to them that they’ve got all the stuff they’re going to get. And woe to the ones who have to deliver that message. Chapter 7 here we come. I’ve said for years, and you’ve heard me, that if the climate scientists think that people have to give stuff up in order to stop global warming, they themselves have to be first in line! Or regular people are going to spot their crap as the self-serving power grab that it is.”
Syd: “Of course, we help them think that!”
Reg: “That’s the amazing thing about all this. You’re remembering the disinformation campaigns that we used to have to invest in. But that was before Facebook and all the rest of the social media onslaught. We don’t have to do that any more. Regular people do it for us! And since we are customer focused, and offer people what they want, it’s obvious that they will easily shout down the freaks who think that regular people should fry during the summer and freeze during the winter, and not go on their Thanksgiving travel junkets, because of this ridiculous global warming nonsense!”
Syd: “The IPCC thinks we’re past the point where citizens giving stuff up will do much good …”
Reg: “Because they don’t wish to get lynched en masse?”
Syd: “Probably. But they say it’s because we need massive machines in addition to that to make much of any difference in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.”
Reg: “Machines that will, of course, promote the interests of the same climate scientists that refused to practice what they preached in the first place? Machines that will work as well as Mr Musk’s mass-produced (he claims) cars?”
Syd: “You make it sound like …”
Reg: “We will work our way out of our difficulties in the only way that makes any business sense. By adapting to what the planet does, and what our customers do in response to that, rather than try to force people into doing things that they hate in the name of stuff that they can’t see makes any difference to them.”
Syd: “And if the planet does do stuff that matters to them?”
Reg: “Then we put the Mars and Moon scientists to work proving that their tech can work on Earth. If they can pull that off.”