“We’re going to bomb those dirty bastards into the Stone Age,” promised President Bush yesterday, as he launched his ‘War on Climate Change’ by announcing a series of air strikes against countries which fail to meet international targets for reducing their carbon emissions. “Damn it, if they aren’t prepared to regulate their industries themselves, we’ll just bomb their factories off the map and solve the problem that way!” The beleaguered President’s incredible new policy is believed to have been inspired by fellow Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger’s radical approach to environmentalism in California – credited with securing his re-election as Governor – which saw him vowing to hunt down and eliminate one-by-one individuals threatening the State’s environment. The draconian measures implemented by the Governor included a clampdown on gas-guzzling, emission-heavy vehicles, with the Highway Patrol chasing down and impounding such vehicles at gun point. Another initiative involved dawn raids on energy inefficient houses, with heavily armed National Guardsman kicking in their front doors and forcing householders to switch of TVs and other energy-draining appliances left on stand-by, and imposing $1000 spot fines for anybody found using more than three energy inefficient incandescent light bulbs in their home. Despite being described as ‘heavy handed’ by many opponents – particularly after an unfortunate incident in which a heavily smoking 1966 Oldsmobile Cutlass crashed into a school bus after having its tyres shot out by pursuing police – the Governor’s bold initiative is credited with bringing about a significant decline in unnecessary energy consumption and pollution levels in California. “Schwarzenegger had the right idea – scare the bastard’s into going green,” observes top White House aide Henry Halls. “It’s no good telling people that their profligacy is going to result in disaster a hundred years down the line, you’ve got to make ‘em terrified of being summarily executed if they leave a light burning all night now!” However, instead extending Schwarzenegger’s California initiatives nationwide, the Bush administration has opted to adopt them as foreign policy. “Let’s be honest, Arnie might have been able to get away with this shit with those flaky Californians, but there’s no way Middle America is going to stand for it,” concedes Halls. “If we can’t get Americans to pollute less, the only alternative is to bully the rest of the world into lowering their emissions!”

President Bush has embraced the new green strategy with evangelical zeal, branding those countries with high carbon emissions ‘evil’. “Anybody who destroys the Almighty’s own creation with their pollutions is clearly guilty of a mortal sin,” he recently told a gathering of leading American Evangelical Christians. “They are doing Satan’s work, trying to create a hell here on God’s earth! It is our Christian duty to show them the error of their ways!” Consequently, the President has drawn up a list of ‘Environment Sinners’, including China, North Korea, Iran, Mexico and Venezuela, which are to be given the ultimatum: clean up your act, or face military action. White House officials are adamant that the fact that most of the countries on the President’s list are also either part of his ‘Axis of Evil’, or are mass producers of cheap consumer goods which undercut their US equivalents in the global market, is purely coincidental. The US has also warned that it isn’t just established industrial facilities it is targeting; it is also prepared to strike at new industrial developments which it judges have the potential to pollute. “Whilst it might be fashionable to label the US a threat to the environment, but the fact is that it is developing countries with their inefficient heavy industries and old technology which are doing most of the polluting,” said Bush as he despatched US B-52s on their first environmental mission – against Nigeria. “Well, I’m telling them now – either buy clean and efficient US industrial technology, or go back to their pre-industrial economies.” Indeed, some State Department officials have even argued that wiping out Africa’s industrial capability won’t only help protect the global environment, but that it might also contribute to bringing peace to the troubled continent. “I don’t think that anyone could seriously argue that they weren’t happier when they were all living in those mud huts, herding their cattle,” opined Dean Futz, an advisor on African affairs to the Secretary of State. “It was only when they tried adopting the white man’s ways and building factories, that they started squabbling over natural resources. It will be far better once we’ve gotten rid of all that industry for them and put their resources safely under our protection.”

Although dismissed by political rivals as a cynical attempt to curry favour with the newly Democrat-controlled Congress, by simply recasting its existing overseas policy in environmental terms, Bush’s new strategy has been broadly welcomed by the environmental lobby. “Thank God someone’s finally decided to get serious and kick some ass,” declares top British environmental lobbyist Jonathan Poperine. “All those bloody liberals do is wring their hands and form committees to discuss how terrible global warming is, whilst the Earth fries!” They also seem unconcerned by the economic damage to developing countries Bush’s gung ho green policies are likely to cause. “So what if a load of people in Africa lose their incomes – they’re used to poverty,” says Poperine. “The main thing is that those ice caps don’t melt and flood South Eastern England – think what that will do to property prices.” Professor Jim Standon of Burnley University isn’t surprised at the environmentalists’ reaction. “There’s always been a deeply conservative and elitist undercurrent to green politics,” the political scientist muses. “After all, one of Britain’s leading environmentalists in recent years has been Lord Jonathan Porrit. Moreover, it shouldn’t be forgotten that the Nazis were highly enthusiastic conservationists who harboured fantasies of creating some kind of rural idyll for the master race.” Ultimately, he contends, modern environmentalists are just another front for the deadly pro-hunting Countryside Alliance/landowners lobby – lackeys and lickspittles of the establishment whose main aim is the restoration of a feudal social order in Britain. Indeed, Standon argues that the environmentalists’ calls for restrictions on personal car use, for instance, are clearly an attempt to restrict the free movement of the working classes and prevent them access to the countryside. “Obviously, the only people able to access the countryside they’ve saved will be those who can still afford to own and run their own cars – the BMW and Range Rover driving middle and upper classes,” he says. “The working classes will inevitably be forced back into the cities, leaving the countryside as a playground for the privileged – a pastoral paradise unsullied by smelly industry and nasty lower classes!”