Lord Stern of Brentford bursts into the smoking room of his club like a premature ejaculation, and shouts his almost trademark “Let’s fucking change some climate!”
He greets me warmly and apologises for the absence of his wife, who couldn’t join us owing to her “working overtime at the Kingsnorth power station. Fucking protesters are back, apparently.”
“Can’t they just leave out the activism shit, and get on with their lives?” he barks, downing his glass of cognac.
I am, as ever, startled by his frankness. “Honestly, it’s not like anyone really believes what they say anymore anyway. Take me, for example. You know that thing a couple of weeks ago about the future of the planet resting on people giving up meat? What a load of bullshit. Just wanted to sneak onto the front pages before all the Copenhagen bollocks. I’ve got a mortgage to pay, you know?”
I ask whether he has just admitted to fabricating all of the above.
“Worse,” he responds, “I spent all night trawling through the incoherent ramblings on climateprogress.org, and masturbating to the pictures of emaciated children, until I found something that no-one could possibly agree with – the meat thing. If I wasn’t so fucking wrecked right now, I probably wouldn’t admit any of this, but the wife and I are practically carnivorous, and as everyone knows, veg is for queers.”
“Does this penchant for truth-bending stretch to your other dire predictions?” I ask, feeling more and more uncomfortable with every second.
“Kind of. Most of it probably will happen more or less as reported, but no one ever seems to ask me how I feel about it. About the 5 degrees rise. Let me tell you now, mano-a-mano, I’m fucking jubilant. Who needs Africa anyway? They had their chance, and now the day of reckoning will come, and those who have not prepared will feel the full might of the organic dildo that is Mother Nature!”
At this point Lord Stern passed out.
Lord Stern is IG Patel Chair at the London School of Economics.