The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3432 by Angharad Copyright© 2024 Angharad

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This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
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286 dozen for those who thought I had lost count (not just the plot).

We returned to Portsmouth in good spirits, I wondered if Danni had been right, it was the universe or some other hitherto unseen power that needed Abi to meet with Stephanie, but what a roundabout way for it to happen. Again the name of the Shekinah crossed the couple of functioning brain cells, I term my mind. I know I am supposed to be an agent of said Old Testament goddess, but would she really need me to get involved when she should be able to make it happen all by herself? If it was her handiwork, and it could be, why did she need me? Then, I didn't pretend to understand all the ramifications. Looking at it simplistically, my usual modus operandi, how would Abi normally meet Stephanie? To start with, neither would even be aware of the other's existence. I suppose if they did a search for paediatric mental health experts with expertise in treating gender dysphoria, they may have found her but I suspect the distance may prevent them trying to see her or without my asking her to see them as a favour, she may not have agreed to it.

She is a friend of mine, or at least I consider her to be one, and although we rarely have much purely social contact, we have a positive regard toward each other. It's just we are so busy. As we approached our house I remembered Henry had asked me for some new green issue that he could use to make High Street a bit different to the other clearing banks; we'd done the energy saving thing, we'd done sponsorship of films, we'd done the dormouse account for children in which they had got a free dormouse book as soon as they opened an account. I had written one specially with lots of pictures in it, mainly my photos, and lots of facts about dormice made as palatable as I could make them, plus how they were helping the bank to be the greenest one by saving with them, as the interest on the money they deposited was used to sponsor environmental projects, the bank making nothing from it and it even cost them money to print thousands of the books. However, the bank wasn't entirely altruistic and their intent was long term because customers rarely changed banks without good reason, child customers may well become adult ones, and that was when the bank might make money from them. I didn't particularly think it was underhand, just long term planning, an unusual item these days. Now I had to think of another scheme to earn my salary and bonus as a director as well as keep the bank in front of its competitors. Oh boy.

I came up with something about having mortgages to be half a per cent lower if they were to buy a house with an environmental feature such as photo electric cells on the roof, or extra insulation, or a heat pump. We also offered a special rate on loans to fit any of these things to an existing property.

To see how much difference it made, we had the roof covered in solar panels on all south facing surfaces. It altered our consumption of electricity and usually netted a few quid as any surplus went to the grid. I had figures and I could use them in a paper for the bank's board and even went so far as to suggest every director's house should be similarly clad, with preferential loans to fund them. Some already had them, some weren't interested and some were hostile to it despite my figures of savings to be made. An alternative idea was to place the solar panels on the roofs of the buildings in which our banks were situated, where it was possible or feasible.

Henry liked both suggestions and thought how much publicity could be gained by having truly greener banks and senior staff. It needed the support of the other directors because they would have to consent to having solar panels on their houses and I had to accept that not all the properties would be in a setting where they would ever gain a profit from such panels. But at least it showed Henry that I was trying to come up with new ideas. The truth was that not all directors thought the green bank was a real benefit and Simon had been able to give me figures he'd collected to show that all previous suggestions had saved money or drew in fresh customers and that the publicity was beginning to work in the minds of the public. Projections for how the new suggestions would not cost the bank and may even generate profits was its main selling point and the board agreed to run a pilot. Henry winked at me which meant I needed to tweak the pilot to gain their acceptance at a future meeting. It was suggested it run for six months. Meanwhile I had another scheme in mind, that our customers got a discount for purchasing bird boxes to fit to their house or garden from a particular supplier. Again it was pooh-poohed by the anti green board members. But this one I knew would work and would not cost us anything, all I had to do was get the supplier to agree to a reasonable discount and have enough stock of a range of boxes.

I had had two lunches with the chief shareholder come chief executive of the supplier and once we got bird boxes accepted, we would look at most of their stock. The benefit to them was free advertising from a bank, and access to our customers once they purchased something. We had agreed that they would only be discreet adverts to existing customers, which they tended to pursue anyway.

Banks have always done deals with insurance companies and other financial services providers, many of them being a division of a bank or allied to it. My idea was just to widen that service and to try and improve the environment at the same time. I had also produced the draft of a series of leaflets we could offer to make a garden more wildlife friendly, again aimed at mainly children but emphasising our reputation as the green bank and one that cares about the environment and giving nature a helping hand.

We broke for lunch. Meals at board level were amazing, always some sort of buffet but with things like smoked salmon and freshly roasted chicken pieces, with new potatoes and salads and extremely fattening desserts. I always stuck with fruit salad after some tuna rolls of hand-baked wholegrain bread.

I had been sitting with Henry but he decided to get up and circulate. His seat was taken by the arch sceptic, George Fairclough. "You don't actually believe all the rubbish you spout about environmental issues do you? I mean, global warming is a lie and all these other things are just gimmicks aren't they?"

"No, the science I present is all correct. I go to some efforts to make sure all my facts are validated by a reputable source and my own research is validated by a reputable third party."

"Aren't we just in a natural cycle?"

"That could be a factor but all the evidence from several sources show that fossil fuel burning is the cause of accelerated climate change, and the most recent evidence tends to suggest it started earlier than we thought."

"Yeah, sure, how could they tell us what things were like ten thousand years ago, or even as recent as a hundred?"

"We have records for a hundred years ago, courtesy of the met office, earlier times we know from ice core samples from that period, or oceanic mud core samples."

"Oh come on, how can we believe that?"

"I have seen both ice core samples and oceanic ones, the latter are analysed at NOC at Southampton They have something like three kilometres of core samples and are one of the main repositories in Europe, if not the world, with all sorts of fancy kit to carry out tests. They use various dating methods, including spectrometer and radiographic methods and for the oceanic cores they also do analysis of foraminifera as fossils, using a scanning electron microscope, which can magnify up to ten thousand times and do all sorts of clever things.

"Also they collect data on sea temperatures from all over the planet and all are showing a rise in both the amount of temperature and that of carbon dioxide in the seas. The temperatures at both poles are alarmingly high and the ice is melting at both ice caps. It's quite worrying."

"Hasn't all this been shown to be a hoax?"

Oh dear, it looks like we have a climate denier. They believe the conspiracy theories by assorted lunatics and cynics on social media much of which is promulgated by oil companies or funded by them. It's like listening to the water companies pleading poverty when asked to sort the waste water problems, mainly because they have ripped off the huge profits from customers and paid themselves and their shareholders vast dividends and bonuses. In other words, when they saw the way the public opinion was going, they sent it out of the country. All the companies are owned by foreign parent companies so they see us just as cash cows. The oil companies have been spreading disinformation about climate change and atmospheric gases for at least forty years. They are all liars and deserve prison sentences for corruption but they are so rich, they can threaten to destroy governments overnight if they so choose.

I told him my truth and with my smartphone called up all sorts of data to prove my case, he called up Facebook and showed some of the figures he had been using. I didn't accuse him of being an idiot, although most Facebook users come into that category or paedophiles, or vaccine deniers. While it's tempting to label them all as stupid, because there are some very clever people in the background, funding and writing plausible if entirely misleading facts. If you haven't a background in science or maths and can't properly analyse these misleading data it's easy to be manipulated into believing them.

I wouldn't go so far as calling the believers idiots, but they aren't usually too bright and they can cause problems. Reading the wrong newspaper can also reinforce prejudices and we tend to be drawn to those media that preserve our view of the world, even if we will ultimately die because we didn't do anything about various issues. It strikes me as unfortunate that children who haven't been vaccinated because of parental disbelief in the advantages and protection of vaccination, die as a consequence. If that happens surely they should be prosecuted for neglect or contributory manslaughter?

Ignoring the scientific evidence doesn't make it go away, it just means you may die because of the ignorance. Governments don't want to take action on climate because it will cost money and are sometimes unpopular, but we are fast approaching a tipping point and then it will be too late. I think we may have already passed it.

In terms of wildlife issues biodiversity continues to drop, a recent survey by the invertebrate charity on the front number plates of cars, looking at the area covered by dead insects, suggests insects have now declined by 80%. We are going to be affected soon because crops pollinated by them will also be in decline and food shortages, like those caused by climate change, will make some start to notice the fact that they can't get all the things they want to eat, possibly leading in the worst scenario of not getting enough food.

Couple all this with populist dictators running a number of countries, who are usually climate deniers, and life is going to be a struggle for increasing numbers of people, not to mention freak weather of excess heat, or rain, or floods, wildfires, mudslides etc, all caused by climate change much of which is attributable to greed, though I doubt that is consolation to someone whose house has just burned down in a wildfire.

I didn't try to tell any of this to George because he wouldn't listen. He's convinced himself in the rightness of his argument, that fact that it's built on lies and fake news doesn't matter. I can only tell my truth as I see it, with scientific evidence and verifiable facts, if people won't listen because they prefer to pay heed to lies, I hope they don't have grandchildren who will pay an awful price for their gullibility. Wonderful innit?