Butterflies

Market research suggests most of you are on the dole, tooting on your crack pipes, complaining about the cost of crystal meth while your partner spends the night on the game and the morning on low-quality reality TV. Not me. I hold down a job; my spirit’s not going to crush itself, after all. Much of my working life has been spent in meetings with a variety of beige managers gobbing off while I dwell on how the meeting could have been an email, the email could have been a text, and the text could have been me turning my phone off. The tragedy is that this isn’t just destroying my very soul but also my very planet.

Meetings are killing us. We get into our cars, we drive somewhere spewing carbon filth into the air like a Chris Tarrant spewing gunge on a TISWAS audience, we make a bit of chat, we get back into our cars, we drive back spewing carbon filth into the air like a student traveller spewing from both ends because they took a punt on street food. If we’re important enough we get into a plane, fly somewhere spewing carbon filth into the air like a clumsy guy spewing water everywhere because someone made him laugh just as he took a sip, we make a bit of chat, we get back into a plane, we fly back spewing carbon filth into the air like your teenage daughter spewing morning sickness into the gutter. According to yer average carbon calculator, a flight from New York to Washington spews out 119kg of carbon dioxide per passenger. A flight from Glasgow to London spews out 133kg. An unforgivably avoidable flight from Manchester to London spews out 90kg. Even going by car you’d spew out 120kg getting from Glasgow to London, or 60kg from Manchester to London.

In our ravaged, post-pandemic hellscape we already have the phone and video conferencing technology to make this look almost completely stupid. We don’t drive to the shops now we all buy online. We don’t go on dates now we all expose ourselves in filthy chat rooms. We can stay in our own offices, have an equally unproductive meeting without spewing carbon filth into the air like a Zero spewing overlong similes into a Butterfly, and save ourselves time we’re never going to get back because that stuff’s not just precious, it’s linear. When someone suggests getting together for a meeting, give them your finest Greta-style “How dare you” and suggest you do it apart instead. Who’s with me?

(Those who are with me are cordially invited to attend a networking forum at the Isle of Wight airport hotel on Tuesday the 4^th to discuss how best to implement our being with me.)

Photo credit: The Zero