I am reading CW's "My insect-slaughtering past haunts me" and I am having a triple vision:

1. I see my childhood in which, just as described by CW, there are tons of mosquitos, flies, bees, ants, crickets and whatever not. That's why when we sleep at the roof of our house in Baghdad the beds are covered with baldachin so that the clouds of mosquitos don't eat us alive. "Balcachin" about wich Oxford dictionary says "Late 16th century (denoting a rich brocade of silk and gold thread): from Italian baldacchino, from Baldacco ‘Baghdad’, place of origin of the brocade." Just like about muslin it says " Early 17th century from French mousseline, from Italian mussolina, from Mussolo ‘Mosul’ (Baldachin, muslin - Baghdad and Mosul later destroyed by other civilisational words like "bombs" and "granades" succumbing under the major climate polluter - war)."

One night, only one! there was some natural phenomenon, was it wind? My mother said "There won't be mosquitos tonight, I will take away the baldachin so you can watch the stars until you fall asleep". This one night with breeze and stars was never repeated.

2. I see my insect-voided present where, unlike CW I am not haunted by killing insects - I was the type of girl that would scream her head off rather than smear a fly on a wall; but now I constantly fret about my cigarette buds and the cellophane that covers the cigarette box's and how and where I should through them. I fret about the plastic package of the nuts that I may by during the day, the bottle of water etc etc etc I am constantly aware about everything I do as I know I am polluting. Wash my hands - polluting; take the bus - polluting; use my phone - polluting. Polluting might turn out to be this primary sin of which Christianity talks: We start polluting the moment we are born and we don't stop even when we die - be it a premium oak wood coffin or the crematorium we continue polluting.

3. I see the near future. The near future that started two days ago when: Trump offered to help Putin extinguish the massive fires burning through Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and Yakutia.

What will happen in few days/weeks time, is that as a sign of gratitude, Putin will call Trump and offer to help him in the battle against China.

A little bit later after having helped each other in turns, Trump will offer Putin Вечна дружба or Eternal Comradery which they will seal by vowing to never give up on oil, gas, coal and all other natural resources until their total global exhaustion.

After all, the conquest of the Cosmos in general and of Mars in particular will need plenty of "volunteers" Siberian style. Just as Siberia with all it's oil wells, petrol pumps, gas pipes, coal fields and zinc, lead, asbestos, iron, diamond and etc mines and whatever else they are having needed and still needs convicts and sefs. But then again, despite all intrinsic human positivism, the open Cosmos (in general and Mars in particular) won't be a more attractive of a destination for the majority of the world's population than Siberia. Hence, an ecological catastrophe, with its humanitarian crisis of displacement may come well timed for the manning of Earth's first flotilla to Mars.

Will my son choose death by drowning as a result of flooding, or boarding an one way space ship to Mars?

Am I being optimistic here or pessimistic?

By then, of course, in order to save their populations from drowning or other eco catastrophe UK, Australia and New Zenland would have "surrendered" to the USA. EU will belong to Russia. All the Southern Mediterranean and Arabic Peninsula to Iran. Africa to China. Japan? Not sure how Japan and some other parts of Asia will conglomerate - somebody else would have to fill in my geopolitical blind spots.

Just as Global Economy imposed the conglomeration on enterprises; Global Worming will impose more or less expected geo-political conglomerations.

When my son was little we loved to watch "All dogs go to heaven". I reckon if the world ends and heaven and hell happen to exist. The hell will be busy with BP, Total etc directors and executives and all petrol, gold, aluminium, diamond, and whateverbattriesaremadefrom magnates, small and big dictators and all, Whitehall included, war lords. Hell would be so packed - there won't be space for vicious little bug-killer girls. Thus, CW will have all the time in heaven to apologies to the insects she once killed in person and one by one, with all the dogs in the world are jumping around.

Unless, of course, when the world comes to an end - it becomes clear that space ships with their survivors cruising through an infinite cosmos are hell; and the few remaining terrestrial islands with the few surviving petrol magnates and war lords bunkered on them turn to be heaven.

Either or, there is no way those who have as little as killing an insect or throwing a fag bud on a pub terrace to predate on their sleep to inherit the Earth.

The Earth will probably by inherited by David Greffen and whosoever is on his yacht, if you asked John Niven.

4 August

For Caitlin Moran's 'I mourn the bugs' here