By 2020 the seed bank is in constant demand as world experiences a series of crop failures. Vault comes to rescue of US breadbaskets and staves off threats of another potato blight. Millions of lives saved. Certain.
* Terrorists hatch plot to break into vault and hold superpowers to ransom. They are arrested at Longyearbyen airport. Possible.
* Svalbard Global Seed Bank is left unscathed despite a series of traumatic episodes this century. Foreseeable.
Likelihood of Svalbard seed vault being infiltrated: 12%
Give me your answer, do
AGENDA
* Blame emissions on the Aberdeen Angus
* Beef up your diet
* Chew on a new method of carbon offsetting
* Really milk it
Every plot needs a scapegoat. If you are to mastermind planetary ruination then you’ll be looking for someone, or something to take the heat off you. Ideally, you should think about indicting nature or one of her most benign creatures. Something that lolls around in meadows innocently chewing the cud would fit the bill. Something so hapless it allows itself to be reared only to be milked dry, munched up, and spat out. Fodder. Fodder that answers to the name of Daisy.
Now, every time Daisy burps she unleashes a great whoosh of one of the most potent greenhouse gases around: methane. Forget the successes of the oil barons, now that farmed ruminant animals are known to produce up to a quarter of man-made methane emissions, their demonization has begun apace. Yes, these conniving creatures are making your emissions worse, expelling a gas with twenty-three times the warming potential of carbon dioxide. You are getting the flak for their flatulence. After you have lovingly nurtured them for succulent steaks, how could they be so traitorous?
Fly me to the moon
Cows really are the must-have scapegoat for anyone serious about f**king with the planet. Blame the bovines and you can carry on peacefully polluting, mining, chopping, and generally just doing what you do best. Efforts to ensure that the cow takes the stick for climate calamity will be wholeheartedly supported by all those engaged in increasing emissions. That’s quite a lot of support. The automobile and aviation industries are among those whom you should expect to endorse every attempt to point the finger at the heinous heifer. Already, Michael O’Leary, the head of no-frills airline Ryanair, has tied his colours to the mast. He stated that the massacre of the world’s cow population would do more to solve global warming than banning flying ever could. The chief executive of the Dublin-based carrier added that ‘eco nuts’ should stop fretting about the fastest-growing source of emissions – flying – and concentrate their hot air on livestock farming.
You could go one step further. Take your lead from the Romans and make a sacrifice before undertaking a perilous voyage abroad – a single flatulent cow would fit the bill. After all, each creature emits around 95 kilograms of methane a year, which equates to 2,185 kilograms of carbon dioxide, practically the emissions of two return flights between London and New York, or almost equivalent to eight flights to Paris and back. At any rate, way more than enough to assuage the conscience of passengers trotting up the steps of O’Leary’s jets. It would be a simple system. Upon reserving a flight, the electronic booking service notifies a computer database situated in a large warehouse crammed with four-legged herbivores. An electronic pulse activates 10,000-volt nodes attached to each resident. The cow is instantly electrocuted. Holidaymakers are sent the number of their dead cow, which has to be produced alongside their booking reference at passport control. Their consciences are clear and their holidays will be a right laugh because, now they have done their bit for the planet, they fully deserve a drunken weekend break in Honolulu. The several score transport lobbying groups in Brussels should, as a matter of priority, consider pushing for the mandatory killing of cows to become European-wide policy on carbon-offsetting.
Thar she blows
Studies have already been commissioned to explore the potential of butchering these wickedly polluting beasts earlier in life. The less time cows have to belch, the safer the world is. Or so the perceived wisdom goes. On to the crime chart. The belching and farting of a single British cow releases the equivalent of 4,000 grams of carbon dioxide each day. Comparative figures (surely released by the automobile lobby – and if not, why not?) reveal that a four-wheel-drive Land Rover Freelander emits a piffling 3,419 grams on an average day’s drive. Further data suggests that the planet’s entire herd of 1.5 billion cattle is more lethal to the planet than every car, plane and other form of transport added together. Those who believe global warming is bulls**t finally have their proof.
You’ve been framed
A 400-page UN report entitled ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’ was unveiled in November 2007. This little gem is the document with which you can put the cow in the frame. It reveals that farmed animals bred for human consumption cause 18 per cent of global greenhouse-gas emissions. Crikey. If more evidence is required against the cow, merely mention acid rain. When cows pass wind they produce two-thirds of the world’s ammonia – one of the principal causes of acid rain. By now, anyone in receipt of such information who believes the planet is worth saving may have fled to the nearest field and be already strangling the first cow they chance upon. An honest response, perhaps, but, for your purposes, a naive one. Undeniably, cows are helping advance climate change, but their true value lies in providing a smokescreen for greater, more efficient ways to accelerate global warming. The longer cows are in the dock, the more time there is to pursue airport growth, road-building, economic expansion, and other vital pursuits.
It is with some relief that you’ll see even politicians beginning to buy the milky message. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California told the climate-change hearing of the House Committee on Science and Technology that previous cycles of global warming had been caused by ‘dinosaur flatulence’. Cows, the interpretation went, would bring about the same result. In January 2007, the Liberal Democrats, eager to prove their climate-change credentials, were fast off the mark in identifying the scale of the threat. ‘Flatulent livestock emitting methane are beyond a joke,’ declared Chris Huhne, who, despite such impeccable green credentials would regrettably, and shortly after, lose his bid for party leadership. Politicians everywhere will soon join in the free-for-all as it becomes evident that the planet’s future is irrevocably linked to the mooing gasbags roaming nearby. Daisy and her playmates will be, terminally, put out to pasture.
Petrified by the crisis unfolding in its rural heartlands, the government has already ordered a new research programme, enlisting the help of experts at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research in Aberystwyth to discover how this environmental criminal can be tamed. Experts realize that the global-warming gas is produced in cows’ guts, but ‘how’ is a matter of debate, and agreement is scarce, except that this is serious. One experiment involves attaching bags to both ends of a cow to catch flatulence as it is released. Feeding cattle garlic has also been examined. A new type of grass is being trialled. Researchers from the distinguished Well Cow project have implanted sensors to monitor the insides of a cow’s stomach. Cattle-lytic converters, it can be assumed, are in development.
A flatulence tax might be called for, but this would only provoke formidable-sounding opposition from a lobby such as New Zealand’s Fight Against Ridiculous Tax (FART), a risk too far. Anyway, it’s unlikely that cows would be able to fill in the appropriate paperwork, much less pay over the internet.
Kill the fatted calf
Having fitted up this bovine beast perfectly for the methane miasma heating the planet, attention will also be diverted from the wonderfully wasteful