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Jeremy Clarkson on the environment
Jeremy Clarkson is widely regarded as Britain's most celebrated aficionado of loud, rude automobiles. You might be forgiven for thinking he doesn't spare a single thought for the environment at all. But he does. He thinks about it all the time. . .
"Cows eat grass and silage. This is melting the ice caps and killing us all. So they need a new foodstuff: something that is rich in iron, calcium and natural goodness. Plainly they can’t eat meat so here’s an idea to chew on. Why don’t we feed them vegetarians?"
Lets build a giant hosepipe into space!
"The fact is this. Global warming’s coming, so you can don your King Canute hat and stand on the beach waving your Toyota Prius at the advancing heatwave, but it won’t make a ha’p’orth of difference. But don’t worry, because I have a plan. The biggest threat we face, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation, is rising sea levels. Plainly, then, there is too much water in the world, so why don’t we just call Nasa and ask it to take some of it into space? Space is only 75 miles from the surface of the Earth, so why not make a giant hosepipe, dip one end in the sea and take the other end out into the void, where, of course, there is a vacuum. That means the water will be sucked up the pipe without the need for any energy-absorbing pumps."
A Labour MP calls for my execution
"Last week the environmental protest about my way of life took an altogether more sinister turn when a Labour MP called Colin Challen made a speech in which he said he wanted me to be killed. No more pies. No more early days motions. Executed. Maybe he was joking, maybe he wasn’t."
The planet will sort itself out
"Ecologically speaking, a spilt tanker load is like sticking a safety pin into an elephant’s foot. The planet barely notices. After the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska the oil company spent billions tidying up the coastline, but it was a waste of money because the waves were cleaning up faster than Exxon could. Environmentalists can never accept the planet’s ability to self-heal"
Save rural Britain by selling it to the rich
"For the past 19 years the European Union has been paying farmers large lumps of our money to grow nothing at all. It’s called the set-aside policy and I’ve always hated its communist overtones. I should have been delighted when I heard that this autumn it’s expected to be abolished. But I’m not. I’m filled with an awful sense that something truly terrible is about to happen."
My fast, powerful car lets me see more of my children
"I derive no pleasure at all from doing 180mph — if I’m honest, it’s a little bit frightening — but I derive a huge amount of pleasure from covering 180 miles in an hour. It means I get wherever I’m going more quickly. And that means I have more time to do stuff that is worthwhile. This is what the socialists and the environmentalists just can’t get into their thick heads. Their lives may be empty and friendless, but some of us don’t have the time to dawdle. If I leave London after work in a ponderous and hopeless diesel car, then I do not have sufficient power to overtake slower-moving traffic on the run from Oxford to Chipping Norton. This means I get home after the children have gone to bed, which means they don’t see me. And that in turn means they’ll grow up to be glue sniffers or Liberal Democrats."
"You may save the planet with this car. But you could well lose a leg in the process. You will certainly lose all your friends because to justify your significant £7,000 purchase you will need to explain, loudly and often, that it uses no fuel, that you simply charge it up at night – using power from a power station."
Drip-drip-drip of a revolution
"Chelsea Tractors are reviled because these are symbols of middle-class success. You have to remember that trade unionists and antinuclear campaigners didn’t go away. They just morphed into eco-mentalists because they realised that global warming was a better weapon than striking, or doing lesbionics for mother Russia in Berkshire."
"I spent some of my holiday in Canada this summer, and it was like lying in a nest of cotton wool, being hypnotised by a tin of treacle. I liked to swim in the morning, when the mist was rising, and in the afternoon I’d go kayaking for hours round all the islands and through the forests, soundlessly, apart from the paddles making eddies in the water. And the occasional satisfying crack as the beavers gnawed their way through another pine. At night I’d lie in bed listening to the loons, those beautiful diving birds, and the gentle slop of the calm waters lapping against the untouched shoreline. And I couldn’t help thinking: what I need to make this the best place on earth is a speedboat . . ."
"There is, according to the Campaign to Protect Rural England, now so much light pollution in Britain that, you’d be hard-pressed to spot a Nazi searchlight. The mongers of doom even go so far as to single out Oxfordshire as a particularly unpleasant white spot, saying that there is not a single part of the county that gives a “zero” light reading. Really? How come then that as Mars came to within six thousand trillion miles, it was providing enough light in Chipping Norton to read by?"
The polar bear is a big, dirty, savage brute - long live extinction
"We’re told that because of the Range Rover all the ice at the North Pole is melting and that as a result the polar bear has nowhere to live. Contrary to what you may have been led to believe by Steiff’s cute and squishy cuddly toys, the polar bear is a big savage brute; the colour of nicotine, with a mean ugly pointy face and claws that, were they to be found in Nottingham on a Saturday night, would be confiscated as offensive weapons."
"If we can push the winter so far back that by the time it comes along we’re already into the spring, all should be well. To cure the common cold we simply need to get rid of its breeding season. This means producing as much carbon dioxide as possible. Yup. The cure for the common cold may well turn out to be the Range Rover"
Doing my own bit for the environment
"Does anyone really imagine for a moment that my wife gives two stuffs about global warming? She certainly didn’t appear to be all that bothered on Thursday evening when, during the great carbon-saving switch-off, I ran round the house furiously turning on every light, hair dryer, dishwasher and toaster."
"Recently, Boris Johnson jokingly wondered what had happened to all those Trots and Bolsheviks from the 1970s. Boris, my dear chap, they never went away. And now there are many more of them, living among us, posing as normal, respectable members of the human race. It’s just that they’re not called Trots and Bolsheviks any more. They’re called environmentalists and health and safety officers. Think about it. A single health and safety man can inflict more damage on business and industry than an army of Red Robboes. And the goals of an environmentalist far exceed the aspirations of even the most hardbitten 1970s communist."
On second thoughts... the end is nigh!
"I am also fearful that unless we stop thinking of ways to prevent global warming, and start to address the problems it will cause when it gets here, our children are going to finish their days in an overcrowded, superheated vision of hell. Where they can’t even get a cold drink, because all the corner shopkeepers have been made to go and live in Pakistan."
How about we tax everyone who has a car, prevent people going on holiday.....Stay in england pay more tax (Confidential New Labour Stealth Law) But what about china and india and USA, who cares no one is going to tell them. Perhaps, Bob Geldolf and Bono could pay more tax for the environment..heaven
Paul Costello, Stourbridge,
Yes the hypocrisy of enviro-mentalists is staggering.
This weekend I sorted the garden, so I had a load of rubbish to take to the tip (no local service), this meant using the car to drive to the tip then queue for 30 mins.
At least all the CO2 produced by these cars will be good for the plants.
Andy, Leeds,
If you think JC is selfish then you've never met the average American, driving an F150 to the cornre store. Or the average Chinese depaerate to have a car - any car.
If by some stroke of authoritarianism you successfully got every American to trade in the Silverado's and F150's and drive Priuses, the net effect would be cancelled out by two years of world population growth.
Global warming is coming, unless the sun cools off enough to counter it. Sell your propertly in the Fens, it's dehydrated North Sea and it's about to be reposessed. Buy some potential beachfront property on the Downs. I'm at 1,096m keeping my feet dry
Quidam, Bragg Creek, AB Canada
Jeremy, have you ever thought about being a bit less selfish and moving closer to your work place, rather than an hours drive. You can afford it and maybe even burn off a bit more of that weight and cycle to work, or even get a job closer to home?
Have you seen the list of youngsters who try and emulate your driving speeds who are now dead in road traffic accidents.
David Webb, Axminster, Devon
i believe clarkson would make a brilliant prime minister and would make Britain great again. Mankind can't possibly have an effect on the earths climate. Any reasonable person who looks at the FACTS will realise that 'global warming' is pathetic and rediculous.
Christopher Bell, Derby, UK
Jeremy would be an excellent PM! He would be the only PM with a sense of rumour and a decent car. Bring it on......................
We all love The Clarkson (and TopGear)
Emma Brooker, Guildford, Surrey
Jeremy clarkson is quite right about the environment and global warming is a load of rubbish seeing as it is extremely cold at the moment.
Calum McHale, London,
Whatever you might say about the environment, I'd argue that a clean place is a pleasant place.
Lorinc Del Motte, Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada
Jeremy is right. All those bolshis from the 70s are now working as health and safety inspectors and are ruining this country. That was their aim then and that is now. Unfortunatly they are winning and we are paying for it with more and more taxes.
Tom Bruck, Radlett, Herts
Why all this talk about global warming? I thought acid rain was the problem!
Scott Miller, Florence, USA
All this enviroment stuff is giving me a headache! It is just a new techique in selling crap. Who in there right mind would choose a Toyota Prius otherwise?
David, London, UK
Global warming has been happening for millions of years off and on and it still will do we are a blink of an eye in the earths history so get real and live you lives for now, we make no difference either way.
PS if a bus lane says 7.30-9.30 it means you can use it after 9.30 and all day
andrew varley, Leeds, UK
Mr Clarkson has realised that the only result of attempting to engage the ecology-radicals of the Left is a dialogue of the deaf. These awful people, with the souls of secret policemen, adopted their secular credo long ago, and it seems so self-evident to them that they can brook no further enquiry nor tolerate disagreement. This is why your esteemed columnist has decided to pour such amusing scorn upon them and all their works, while at the same time drawing our attention to the pragmatic solutions we must seek to the challenges of our rapidly changing world. His apparently 'Heath-Robinson' approach to the possibility of engineering our way out of disaster belies his shrewd understanding that '... unless we stop thinking of ways to prevent global warming, and start to address the problems it will cause when it gets here .. ' we will be in real trouble. Serious, practical scientists, in contrast to those wishing to pose as millennarian prophets of an almost medievally miserablist and anti-human cast, can understand the blindingly obvious point that, unless we retain all the trappings of an advanced technological society there will be absolutely not a snowball’s chance in Hell of being able to adapt to the ‘wrath of Nature/God’ (its difficult to tell which sometimes from all the millenarian rant). The absurd arrogance of these people! They are so sure they know it all that, as under Pol Pot in tragic, misled Cambodia not so very long ago, we will all eventually be marched off into the wilderness to be beaten and starved into final submission to their cranky views. The fact is that you can only turn back human history by killing people. This is a much madder scheme than anything our Jeremy has come up with (in his Swiftian way), and the humourlessness of his detractors should be a dead giveaway to their stark, staring fanaticism.
Philip Davies, Aberystwyth, Wales
Come on Jer, all of this hot air of yours is not doing GB any favours. Aynway, you haven't put your finger on it yet. It's not the cars, not the tankers, not the gases and definetely not the developpers.
It's the six billion people crowding the planet and producing all of them.
eugene, heidelberg, germany
Each time i'm subjected to some prententious pro-environmental drivel from some tofu-swigging member of the green militia, I simply get up, go to my garage, start my 13 year old car, and leave it running for hours at a time.
Scott Millson, Toronto, Canada
Ol' Jeremy is kinda funny, but his tired old anti-environment blah-blah-blah is getting old. Besides, I wouldn't want to eat an overweight, fat, meateater anyway.
Miles, Bensheim, Germany
Working for Jag/Land Rover as I do, i have to constantly tell people our cars are carbon neutral and thanks to that little sticker in the window (which may or may not be carbon neutral) they can see for themselves. OK, so it costs a few hundred odd quid, but here's an idea, how about methane neutral stickers for cows..... With all those hand outs for set-aside and leasing land to brokers maybe they can spare a bit to save the country they may or may not be feeding.
Alistair Kipling, Birmingham,
Yes Julie, I'm afraid it is.
Tim, Sunny Scunny,
The hosepipe idea doesn't work. The water and gas on the Earth is already able to be sucked away, it just isn't because it is attracted to the Earth by gravity and stays there. Putting in a hosepipe doesn't change the gravity situation, the water would stay where it is.
Simon, Edgware,
In New Zealand we eat more pies per population than America.
We eat more fish and chips per population then America
We love to go round till 4 in the morning drag racing on our extensive country roads network In ten year old Hondas when where fifteen which were created by farmers who burnt down all our trees
Clean and green? "Yeah Right"
More like brown and ugly
Alex, Palmerston North, New Zealand
Most large wild animals can be quite brutish, it's often how wild animals manage to survive.
By suggesting that this is a good reason for them to go extinct, you're simply telling everyone what a colossal prick you are.
Jim, Durham,
Brilliant!!!
Trev, Bath,
Congratulations to JC. If his light-hearted comments cause some of the pompous, self opinionated twerps who run our country to remove their heads from their rear ends and take a look at what they are doing to it, then his contribution to life will be truly worthwhile.
When it comes to global warming, the question I would like answered is......when ice melts, why the assumption that sea levels will rise. Ice has a greater volume than water so when it melts, won't it create a smaller total volume than before.
Hope that keeps environmentalists busy enough to leave normal people alone.
Again, well done JC, even more cutting remarks next time eh.
Dave Davies, Camberley, Surrey
All this enviroment stuff is giving me a headache! It is just a new techique in selling crap. Who in there right mind would choose a Toyota Prius otherwise?
There does seem a lot of self righteous hippies nowadays! I am gonna go out and buy a 5.0 litre engine something, dont need it but want it for the sake of it.
David, London, UK
Ten thousand years ago (a blip in world history) most of Britain was covered in Ice one mile deep. We all need to just Lighten up a little.
Mike, Bremen , and its bloody cold
What is wrong with Nuclear power? The nuclear waste can be fired deep into space and we will never need to think about it. I am not joking, please point out the problem with this plan?
Will, Cobham, Surrey
Well done Jeremy!
Even the politicians do not understand the real reasons behind global warming. It's just as the silly remarks on hospital infections caused by dirty wards. honestly! where do they get their information. Back to basics?, I think they should go back to school and learn a little physics, before they really
become a laughing stock.
K Stephens-Borg, Barnstaple, North Devon
Absolutely brilliant, as always in the right and I say that even though I haven't driven a car for 25 years. They said don't drink and drive, so I looked at my priorities and stopped driving.
Frank, Saarbruecken, Germany
Gordon
As the pressure caused by water in, for example, the sea far exceeds that caused by air, could a logical solution to this conundrum be to extend the hosepipe further into the sea, thereby giving enough pressure to support a substantiallytaller column of water?
kisses
harry
Harry, Rochester,
Tom
I am a bit overwhelmed that you thought I was being serious. If you really want to know about the physics of a vacuum then please don your anarak and read on. A vacuum does not suck (it can't - there is nothing there, that tends to be the whole point of a vacuum it's a lot of emptyness - why does that make me think about the intellectual content of a BBC programme about cars?). It is the pressure of the atmosphere (or whatever) that pushes into a vaccum. At sea level the air exerts a pressure of about 14lbs per square ins. This is sufficient to support the weight of a column of water about 30 feet in height. Therefore I'm afraid this is as good as it could get for the giant hosepipe - another great Britsh invention that hardly gets off the ground. I am sure a German motoring correspondents could come up with much more practical idea.
Cheers
Gordon
Gordon, Perth, Scotland
I think the Tories got it wrong; they do not need Boris for London Mayor: they need Jeremy!
Frederick Davies, Oxford, UK
Hilarious, I love the way Jeremy uses humour to cover topical subjects. He's a breath of fresh air in this suffocating world of political correctness and media driven mass panic.
john, Glasgow, Scotland
Blimey, some people don't half take JC seriously! Quite funny in places this week.
Don't worry about global warming, whatever we do won't make bugger all difference. Turn your heating up & enjoy it! :-)
Neil, Wiltshire, England
Gordon, in response to your comment can you please explain your column of water theory? Surely if there is a vacuum at the other end then atmospheric pressure is not an important factor. In another point Gordon, get a life! Clarkson for PM.
Tom, stoke on trent,
re: The Giant Hosepipe. The Earth's atmospheric pressure will support a column of water about 11m high (about 35 feet in English money Jeremy) so how do you transport the water the remaining 74miles 5250 feet.. What about filling all the cars in the world with water and putting a large electromagnet on the moon tto draw them up there. That would solve 2 problems in one, reducing the sea levels and obliging you to live on the moon to write your column.
Gordon, Perth, Scotland
He is an amusing fool.
Brian, Colchester,
"the man is a legend! by Jon, Swansea, Wales"
So was Grendel's mother
William Garrett, Harrow,
Jeremy Clarkson is hilarious and straight to the point. JC for PM now!!!!!!!!!
becki, middesex,
Why don't we just genetically modify a tree so that it grows to 75 miles tall and tolerates salt water. Then just let nature take its course.
Malc, Istanbul, Turkey
I thought that Bernard Manning had passed on...?
Gee Whiz, Oxford,
When I first encountered your articles (on cars) they were mildly funny, and I enjoyed them. However, after a few of them, fatigue set in. This will be the last one. Cretinous drivel.
D. Evans Toronto
D. Evans, Toronto, Canada
Why do people buy expensive cars and then use them for as little time as possible? The faster you go, the less time you have in your red passion. Unless you just choose to sit in it at the end of your speedy trip.
It's like buying a swimming pool and swimming as fast as possible to get out of it in record time.
Perhaps we should all have a car a bit faster than the one in front. That really makes sense.
Joseph Easy, Perpignan, France
What does Clarkson mean, the vacuum in space will pull the water from the sea up the hosepipe. Utter nonsense. Any fool knows that it will be the centrifugal force of the earth going around that will push the water up the hosepipe and off into space.
RichardCr, Baden, Switzerland
Last week I managed to reduce my carbon dioxide output by only breathing in.
Unfortunately this was offset by the ambulance which came to get me.
RJ, Jersey, CI,
The Clarkson effect on environmentalism is probably similar to the Tory-Immigration effect on Labour: every time he writes, he concedes more of the middle ground, and makes more moderate people think, "Actually, maybe the other guys are slightly less ridiculous..."
I think, actually, Clarkson's a very clever pro-environmentalist.
Well done.
Tom Parnell, Oxford,
I like Clarkson better when he's being funny about cars, not whining about environmentalists and indulging his ironic 'pollution is great' shtick.
Andy M, Liverpool, UK
Amen!
Zak Larue-Buckley, Leicester,
Mr. Clarkson you are right.
How knows what normal climate conditions are? The few measurements taken out of ice cores can only show an incomplete record of parts of the world when the ice was present. To state that the conclusion drawn of the small data basis we have is the undisputed truth is a liar.
That's like a baby born in winter must think about the world when the summer is coming.
Daniel J Hahn, Eichenau, Bavaria/Germany
I understand that my local council will soon have me putting on the dishwasher to wash my empty cans and yoghurt pots before I can put them into the dustbin. My mum who lives alone and barely manages to create 1/2 a binload of rubbish a fortnight now has 4 wheelie bins which are collected on some sort of rotation understandable only by a computer programmer. Is it me??
Julie Dale, Stone,
the man is a legend!
Jon, Swansea, Wales
I think Mr Clarkson might be onto something with the vegetarians.
But consider how much more numerous are the meat eaters, fat, nutritious and ripe for the dinner table. We could significantly reduce the number of methane producing cows and people in one fell swoop by picking on this segment of the British population. Perhaps starting with certain motoring journalists, what a good idea.
Thomas S, Wellington, New Zealand
You're right JC. If you don't have children, or at least any you're aware of, the world can go to Hell in a handbasket. And with no talent for handbasket manufacture or distribution...
And they call me selfish.
Andrew Milner, Yokohama, Kanagawa
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
Richard Clarke, Chicago IL, USA