Global Cooling

It is absolutely unfair that the media goes on about global warming as if it is the basis of all our problems. At the moment, I would not mind if global warming swamps me. As the energy years have progressed and the World has gone into its save me phase, crying about how we are all going to drown in our own sweat, the weather down here seems to openly oppose all such thoughts.

While the Europeans have been prancing around with their additional summer months of sun speckled frivolity, Johannesburg has just gotten colder. I am beginning to think it might be a conspiracy theory against us, down here, in Africa. I do not know why our plight has never been highlighted, for shortly we shall all die of the terrifying chill, without having being made to look like snow heroes. It’s Africa, for crying out loud. We wore shorts in the winter. Our houses are built to remain cool during the long summer months, and not to retain heat. People survive in shacks, in shanty towns, because it does not snow. It seems that when all the ice bergs melted, they washed right up on our shores.

Before this winter, I had never taken boots that seriously. I viewed them as something you wore to look fashionable and keep up with European trends. I never owned a coat, or wore gloves while I typed. As of this year, I wear boots because they keep me warm, sit on the heater and breathe frozen air in the bathroom while the water takes a million years to heat up. So please, bring on global warming. We would get back to normal, and the West would become like us.

The change in weather highlights the emergence of a new concern. In the coming winter, the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup is to be held in South Africa. I sincerely hope that the organisers have taken the climate into consideration; otherwise we shall have to ski instead of play soccer. I feel rather disheartened for the African teams who are use to considerably steamier environments and hopeful of home advantage, for they shall freeze in a blitz of arctic winds.

This past summer, due to the decrease in temperature, I hardly swam, but I could go ice-skating on my swimming pool right now.