THE CHESS OF THE MADDENED QUEEN

I’m fed up with all this pussyfooting around with climate change. Governments and their people making noises, signing protocols, talking about quotas, and pretending that they are doing something about global overheating. And, while we’re on the subject, i’m fed up with the term ‘global warming’. It just sounds so … so warm and fuzzy.

An industrialised country is yet to take the lead on this. If i lived in a country of which i could be proud (and i seriously considered becoming a citizen of New Zealand when that small country stood up and banned US nuclear warships from its waters) then Australia would be doing something. Australia is in a unique position to make a difference and set an example - and that is what we should be doing. Not frittering away our resources, spending the money on big fuck off four-wheel-drives, and tooling about the city in our petty icons of status and power.

All the Kyoto Protocol can hope to do is slow the rate of growth of carbon emissions. Oh, but surely that's a good thing, say people with a feeble grasp of mathematics. No. Short answer, no. Slowing the rate of growth is not the same as reducing emissions. It is merely slowing the rate at which industrialisation and emissions continue to grow. It is merely postponing the inevitable.

Except it is evitable. Almost anything is evitable. Notice, dear reader, that i didn’t say anything fatuous like ‘anything is possible’. As if i were a meteoric sports star standing on the highest podium after a race at the olympics: “This proves anything is possible if you put your mind to it.” No, it fucking doesn’t, you moron. A winner is a sample size of one. What about the other 99 per cent of people in the race, who also put their minds to it, who also gave it their best shot, who also gave 110 per cent, who also did better than their PB. And lost. If someone winning a race proves anything, it proves that you can give something your best shot, put your mind to it all you like, and still have a reasonably high probability of failing. Try telling a vegetable in a wheelchair that she could win the hundred metres freestyle at the olympics if only she would put her mind to it. But i digress.

When chess was played in Persia, back in the mid sixth century, pawns could only move one square at a time. No moving two squares on your first go. No taking another pawn en passant. These moves came later, to speed the game up a little, to leap more quickly into the fray. But more interestingly, the queen was the weakest piece on the board. Both the king and queen were quite staid, protected by the pieces around them, the pieces that held the actual power. Then, around 1580, an Italian suggested making the Queen the strongest piece instead of the weakest. In France, the new game was nicknamed echecs de la dame enragee or ‘the chess of the maddened queen’. The queen became the most powerful piece on the board. Promotion of a pawn became a singularly cataclysmic event.

As i said, almost anything is evitable. And it would help this planet immensely if someone seized leadership, rather than merely clutching at power, and actually fucking did something.

Now if the Art Director was suddenly promoted to the position of the maddened queen, Australia would immediately cease exporting all iron, nickel, and other metals – the basic building blocks of industrialisation – to the rest of the world. Yes, just like that. That would learn’em. Ouch, i hear you say. But how will i meet the mortgage payments on my three-storey house looking over the bay? Then how will i afford my new Landbruiser? Two words. You fucking won’t. You will grow vegetables and cycle to work like the rest of us. You will start actually making a change rather than blowing ever more hot air out into the world.

And you will stop making dirty big holes all over this beautiful land, you greedy mutherfuckers.