BORIS Johnson is warning that our society could face a collapse similar to the fall of the Roman Empire unless climate change is tackled.
En route to Rome for the G20 summit – the precursor to this week’s COP26 conference in Glasgow – he claimed future generations may be threatened by food shortages, conflict and mass migrations because of global warming.
Referring to the Roman Empire, he said: ‘Things can go backwards as well as forwards. Unless we get this right in tackling climate change, we could see our civilisation, our world, also go backwards, and we could consign future generations to a life that is far less agreeable than our own.’
Johnson is, of course, something of an authority on ancient Rome, having written a book about it. But I doubt if he saw the irony of his lecturing us about the regrettable demise of a once-powerful, cultured, civilisation. For right now he’s doing his damndest to bring about the decline and fall of another great country . . . Britain.
His demented rush to dismantle our domestic energy infrastructure and his shambolic response to the Covid pandemic are putting us on the path to economic and social oblivion more surely than the invading Visigoths or Vandals did to Rome.
As we have seen, Johnson likes to channel his inner Roman noble. In 2007, he even donned a toga and joined students outside the House of Commons in protest at plans to scrap the last ancient history A-level.
He’ll be wearing a sober suit as he declaims from his COP26 forum. However, he’ll doubtless be imagining himself as a distinguished Roman – perhaps even an emperor. But which one? Julius Caesar maybe?
Well, Johnson crossed the Climate Rubicon a while ago, turning from sceptic to eco-fanatic faster than you could say ‘Will do, Carrie, darling.’ He has also been stabbed in the back a few times – most notably by Michael Gove – but survived.
Or could he be Hadrian, who built a wall across northern Britain to keep out the wild, woad-painted tribes? Er, not really. Today, an even wilder tribe is in charge there, woke-painted instead of woad-painted, with a truly scary she-devil at its head, threatening to tear Britain apart.
What about Caligula, the nut-job who allegedly planned to make his horse a consul, one of the highest public offices in Rome? Well, Johnson did make Matt Hancock Health Secretary.
No, our Prime Minister is none of the above. Instead, he’s Emperor Nero, the wannabe actor and musician who is said to have played his lyre while he watched Rome burn. It was alleged he started the blaze just to provide authentic background scenery for a play about the burning of Troy.
The lyre-playing arsonist story is almost certainly apocryphal, but does provide a parallel with Johnson. For this week in Glasgow, he’s playing second fiddle to the big polluters of the industrialised world, such as China, who have no intention of wrecking their economies by phasing out fossil fuels.
Despite this, he’ll continue to consign Britain’s way of life to the flames – depriving us of reliable power supplies, warm homes and personal transport in pursuit of his insane, virtue-signalling scheme to retreat from progress and deliver us a cold, costly future of tepid water and wind-powered penury.
Like Nero, Johnson is at heart an actor. And the bonfire of our conventional power stations, gas boilers, petrol cars and the rest will provide the background scenery for the grotesque black comedy he has penned, entitled Net Zero.
