Nova Express

The earth is slowly burning, death lying across its surface like a shroud. Corpses litter parched deserts where once lush, verdant pastures teemed with life. Waters in one part of the world bubble and shrink, while in another they rear up and swallow the land.

Ed Miliband (79) sits outside his Siberian retirement villa, wrinkled and sweaty in the thick, muggy air. Between heavy breaths he speaks. Speaks thus:

Naivety, immaturity, stupidity. These are the basic elements of idealism, and they were in plentiful supply on the perimeter of the Copenhagen summit back in 2009. Forge a meaningful, lasting agreement on tackling climate change, they said. Respect the Kyoto treaty, they demanded. Of our delegates from the developed world they begged, accept responsibility for the state of the earth in 2009, don't make developing nations pay for our mistakes. It was our fault, they said, our doing.

Well, no-one was disputing that, were they? Of course we were liable. But did that mean that we should have accepted liability? Hahabsolutely not! What sort of world were these idiots living in! A world in which people took responsibility for their own actions and dealt with the consequences? Jesus fuck haha!

Oh, Christ... Mustn't laugh... Makes me so terribly dizzy in this heat...

Sorry, I'll be with you in a moment...

Right, where was I? Ah, yes. Responsibility. You see, it's all very well to hold one's hands up and say, yes, we admit it, it was all our fault, we'll sort it out, don't you worry. But that would have been terribly damaging to national interests, would it not? Have you any idea what the bill was going to be for what was proposed at Copenhagen? Why take on that sort of workload and expense when you can simply not?

Seemed simple enough to us, anyway. But then the whiny little sods started saying, no, that's not the point. The point is fairness. Well, I mean fairness! Fucking fairness! Do you want to talk about fairness? How fair would it've been for the likes of us, the British, to be running around now, cleaning everything up while China and India do what they want and reap the bloody benefits?

You're too young to remember, of course, but in our day, believe it or not, we were relatively important. Less so than we had been, but much, much more than we are now. The British Prime Minister, you may be surprised to learn, had access to almost all of the major world leaders. Not merely the President of the Republic of Scotland. Even the Germans listened to us. I mean, they thought we were idiots, but they listened. But we knew then that Britain was going to become a minor economy. We didn't want anyone else to know that, though, so we just played silly buggers for the duration of the summit and then blamed the poorer countries when the whole thing fell apart.

And that's politics. All this 'fairness' and 'justice' and 'not wiping out a quarter of all life on this planet' is all very nice, but in a world like ours, ultimately meaningless. The brutal truth is that everyone's looking out for themselves and to hell with all the other buggers, and so that's the game we all have to play: friend or foe, don't wait to find out, just silently hack your fellow man to death with a machete, fuck his corpse and eat what's left. Then weep, weep for all that's been lost.

Could things be done differently? Well, perhaps. But that would take effort, wouldn't it? Effort and compromise. Co-operation. Skilled diplomacy. Fuck that!