Let’s hear it for wind-turbine warplanes

Evil is on the march, I wrote the other day, and the West should pool its physical, mental and moral resources to survive.

It therefore warms my cockles that the Western alliance is currently led by men who have the vision to identify the nature of the threat and the courage to engage it head on. I mean Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, and Joe Biden, US President.

Mr Stoltenberg cast a panoramic eye over the military conflicts unfolding around the world and unerringly spotted their common cause: global warming. Or, to be more exact, he blamed global warming on the military conflicts.

It’s such calamitous squabbling, he explained, that undermines “our capability to combat climate change because resources that we should have used to combat climate change are spent on our protecting our security with our military forces.”

Not only that, but to his great chagrin the warring parties exacerbate the problem by stubbornly refusing to use only environment-friendly weaponry: “If you look at big battle tanks and the big battleships and fighter jets, they are very advanced and great in many ways, but they’re not very environmentally friendly. They pollute a lot, so we need to get down the emissions.”

It’s good to see that the leader of the Western military alliance is capable of not only identifying the most urgent challenges, but also of coming up with ingenious solutions. Just think how greatly our Typhoon fighter could be improved if powered by a small, tasteful wind turbine.

At present, it carries almost five tonnes of criminal, planet-destroying fuel. A small wind turbine would be a fraction of that weight, which would free up the capacity to carry over four tonnes of vital supplies, such as food parcels for the starving children on the ground.

Of course, there is always the danger that, if there is no wind, the Typhoon pilot would have to perform the manoeuvre known as a “deadstick landing”, one with no propulsive power available. Since the plane may well crash, some may see that as a downside, but it’s overshadowed by the great advantage of saving the planet.

And nothing, repeat nothing, can be more important than that. Joe Biden, Mr Stoltenberg’s de facto boss put it in a nutshell: “The only existential threat humanity faces even more frightening than a nuclear war is global warming.”

Now, for as long as I – and Mr Biden – have been around, and that’s very long indeed, we’ve been indoctrinated to think that an all-out nuclear war would wipe out all biological, including human, life on the planet. Moreover, it could do so in a matter of days.

If global warming presents an even greater “existential threat”, then that disaster must be able to achieve the same gruesome outcome within hours, possibly even minutes. If that’s what Mr Biden thinks, he must have access to classified data inaccessible even to Greta Thunberg.

Hence anybody who doesn’t wish to see ‘our planet’ evaporate must campaign for the summary elimination of “big battle tanks and the big battleships and fighter jets” if, as seems likely, we are unable to convert them to environmentally responsible power.

Like most aggressors presenting an existential threat to mankind, global warming works in insidious ways. It disguises its evil intent by pretending to be its opposite. Thus, the winter of 2012 was the coldest Russia had experienced in over 70 years, and China in over 30. That could have fooled lesser men than Messrs Biden and Stoltenberg, but thank God they remained as vigilant as ever.

Oh well, enough sarcasm so close to the year’s end. Let’s just say that Mr Stoltenberg must be complimented for identifying the link between the West’s defence capability and its campaign to save ‘our planet’. Except he did so with what the Russians call “the precision of the other way around” (s tochnostyu naoborot, for my Russophone readers).

It’s channelling monstrously vast resources into responding to the woke, non-existent, anti-scientific threat that weakens the West’s ability to face up properly to evil variously originating in Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and so on, all the way down the list.

When the leaders of NATO and by far its strongest member, the US, talk utter drivel instead of issuing stern commands to the military, we should all be afraid, very afraid. This is the real existential threat we are facing, for it’s not evil tyrants who destroy civilisations. It’s the overlapping of evil tyrants on one side with weak, imbecilic leaders on the other.

However, I can’t leave you with the thought of just such an overlap occurring at the moment. Instead, I’d rather lighten up your mood with a festive exchange recently overheard:

“Hello, I’m Nigel and I’m an alcoholic. I drink whisky.”

“Hello, I’m John and I’m an alcoholic. I drink tequila.”

“Hello, I’m Dan and I’m an alcoholic. I drink vodka.”

“Hello, I’m Kevin and I’m a bartender. Coming right up.”

Happy New Year to everyone!