The yellow sun beat down on the tin roofs and on the large sign ‘ANIMAL FAIR,’ and on the little sign ‘animal forest,’ and on what remained of the sign at Animal Farm that palely said ‘ANIMAL F...’
The leaders of the two democratic Parties, the pigs Louis 25 and Orwell Double-X Geo, crossed trotters on the porch of the Old Shed and contemplated how well they had prepared for Climate Change.
Under the hot tin roofs, the chickens and the sheep shovelled in their Like-Stuff, their eyes safely blinded with video clips and their ears safely numbed by Cacaphonics. Above their heads was the order of the hour/day/week/year:
If it’s bad for you, do it!
And the obedient mutterings of the flocks repeated, ‘If it’s bad do you for it!’
Louis and Orwell were proud of their achievements. With the tacit approval of the masses, of course, most of the taxes were borne by the masses and most of the benefits went to the pigs in their pig-palaces.
The more masses there were, the more demand pushed up what they had to pay for their cages, and the more the pigs amassed from their constantly growing sales of Like-Stuff — as well as from selling the harvested carcases.
Now, the Porkine Corpuses — who spoke through Louis and Orwell — were planning to fit even more masses into even less space and to feed and water them even less. All with their compliance and even active co-operation, of course. They planned to do this by doing all they did in the name of ‘Climate Change.’
They had solutions for Climate Change well in hand.
Thanks to Scratch
Were too many carbon emissions and other pollutants accelerating Climate Change? Well, the Porkine Corpuses could be seen to do be doing something about that.
‘We publicise Carbon Credit Trading,’ they said. ‘This will benefit us both ways. First, the poor will cut their emissions and become even poorer by selling their carbon credits to the Porkine Corpuses, who can continue polluting and emitting as much as they like, because they can pay for it. More millions of squillions can be made by financiers who set up and hog the financing for carbon credits.
‘The overall rate of carbon emissions need not change a bit.
‘Second, the constant publicity will distract all attention from anything that might really be done — such as cutting down waste so there will actually be fewer emissions, and less waste of resources which is bad because there are also fewer sales and profits.
‘Is water in short supply?’ asked the Porkine Corpuses. ‘What a market to corner, then! How to get it into porcine hands is easy. Turn water into a commodity, not a necessity like the air we breathe. To make real profit, pump up trading in water rights as the big way to save water. The rich buy the water rights from the small and needy — and need not save a drop.
‘This works out like owning water, instead of the State owning all the rights and being able to regulate their operation. What a lovely field for the operating of markets. And possibly for litigation too. And big international operators like Monpiggo can move in too, to buy up ownership of water.
‘Bigpig companies can buy up sources of water, such as mineral springs, so that they can sell bottled water. Then the poor old chooks and sheep can have recycled sewage without caring too much about the taste or quality, while the well-off can buy the bottled water — at a price.
‘And get the chooks and sheep to save water in their personal living, using less and less for the pleasures that water can give, such as gardens, lawns, showering. While the rich little pigs can put in bores and take the groundwater — for free.’
‘Alert But Not Alarmed’ — that is the slogan about Climate Change. The Mythopiggia puts out reassuring messages on the news.
The good news on the radio is that drought induced by Climate Change can actually help to reduce Climate Change — by blowing nutrient-rich dust off the Big Mostly-Desert Continent into the ocean, to feed more ocean-life that will change the surface of the oceans. Or some such. While the Big Mostly-Desert-Continent loses more topsoil, not to worry.
Another bit of current Mythopiggia good news is that cutting down temperate old forests is a good thing to reduce Climate Change because they are dark-coloured and so absorb heat and so make the earth hotter, whereas bare light-coloured earth (such as left from clear-felling) reflects light and so cools the earth.
Since the chooks and sheep can only take in one fact at a time — due to their sensory hyper-stimulation through the Muddia — and they cannot get out of their Shed to actually walk in a forest, they can only admire how resourceful are the Ones Outside the Shed and Beyond the Rules.
So the midden of financial wealth grew till it towered over Animal F, and the Ones Outside the Shed and Beyond the Rules were pleased with Louis 25 and Orwell Double-X Geo.
But still more, a midden of waste grew and began to trickle its sediments even into the pig-palaces. Then a tsunami and a dust storm and hail and heat and snow and great winds rose and fell and blew, and blew away the notice that said, ‘ANIMAL FAIR.’
