Clarkson v. Porritt

Make no mistake – generally I hate cars. Inefficient, noisy, stinking beasts that dictate that everyone in their environment has to suffer compulsory poisoning and noise pollution. To many environmentalists using a car is akin to taking part in a gang rape of mother earth, and I have to agree as a ‘holier-than-though’ non-driver. It would be so easy to move from here into an anti-car eco-rant, but we’ve all heard this already.

I have to admit that I also appreciate the design beauty of a Lotus or the sheer excitement of travelling at speed, the ultimate merger of man and machine, after all I used to drive motorbikes. I also have to admit, even though I dislike cars, I sometimes enjoy ‘Top Gear’ immensely, and the whole laddish enthusiasm of three grown men behaving like kids around cars. They are great presenters for this subject. I watched an episode recently where Jeremy and his gang decided to convert three cars of their choice into amphibious vehicles and then test them out. I was in stitches with laughter. It was a mission of joy as their ‘day out’ turned from sibling rivalry to a beautiful farce reminiscent of another well-known TV programme in the UK called ‘Last of the Summer Wine’. It was really funny.

I absolutely agree with Mr. Porritt ideologically, but Mr. Clarkson is right, this whole ecology thing can be so tedious. It’s OK to derive amusement from poking fun at environmentalists, but its easy sport. We all know the guilt trips laid on us by ‘sandle-wearing yoghurt knitters’ and have had them rammed down our throats since school. Clarkson is just right when he writes in his Times column that ‘finger-wagging environmentalism…is catastrophically boring’. Mr. Porritt, and many other greenies, myself included (sometimes), can just take ourselves too seriously and come across as puritanical and supercilious – after all, the death of our future is a serious subject, (is that finger wagging? – how does one avoid it?)

Mr. Porritt accused Mr. Clarkson of being ‘a bigoted petrol head’ and said that anyone who could shut him up should be given a knighthood. Mr. Clarkson freely admits to feeling like ‘a bit of beef dripping into a big vat of tofu’ with regards to the oncoming tide of environmental awareness and suggests that Mr. Porritt gets out and finds some fun. Mr. Porritt’s angle is that Jeremy Clarkson is responsible for holding back environmental awareness and is simply encouraging planetary abuse by promoting worship of cars.

As Jeremy Clarkson mentions, recently the BBC ran a ‘save the planet’ quiz show on BBC 1 at the same time as Top Gear on BBC 2 and ‘more people watched the planet being savaged than watching a load of weird beards trying to save it’. Of course this creates resentment from environmentalists, even though Sir David Attenborough himself, who is actually responsible for all life on earth, is now in on the act of ‘raising awareness’. As Jeremy Clarkson mentions Mr. Porritt ‘has come out of nowhere to say that I really do have the power to hold back his plans to make trains out of cardboard and create electricity by composting Tories’.

Some of me wants to ‘switch off’ my conscience with regard to the environment and concentrate on having more fun while I can, and part of me would like to see Mr. Clarkson and his friends punished for their wanton disregard of the environmental crisis.

And my punishment of choice? I would like Mr. Clarkson’s party to be forced to make a TV programme about the responsible treatment of the environment and I would most definitely watch it.

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