Episode 34: We Love Planet Earth

I'm still deep in debug mode when I pick the phone up. Any hope of keeping track of the problem disappears as soon as the Boss starts jabbering.

'They've move the whelp meeting a day forward,' he reports breathlessly.

'Whelp? What the…'

He sounds exasperated. 'Don't tell me you've forgotten?'

'OK. I won't tell you.'

'So you've forgotten…'

'You said not to tell you.'

'Damn it, Joe,' he snaps. 'Saving planet Earth is no laughing matter.'

Now I've got it. He's talking about the We Love Planet Earth program that the company's foisting on us. WLPE is some lame PR exercise to show that we're good corporate citizens who take climate change seriously.

'What WLPE meeting?' I ask, suddenly wishing I hadn't deleted every email related to the program.

'The one we're attending tomorrow, only it's not tomorrow it's today. In 30 minutes to be exact. Send me over your slides and we can have a quick chat before the meeting starts.'

'Slides?'

I can sense the Boss's temperature is rising faster than the planet's. 'Yes,' he tells me, his voice rising, 'the ones where you outline how the development team are going to contribute to reducing our carbon footprint.'

'Well, to be honest,' I explain, 'having looked in detail at the science I really don't think that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are anything to do with the current warming trend. I mean when you look at the historical trends…'

'Joe,' the Boss tells me sternly, 'we now have 15 minutes before the meeting. We're expected to have some concrete proposals on the table. We're supposed to have done the work to show that we care about our planet. You can bet your life that the Server team will have done their work…'

'But the Little Ice Age and the Mediaeval Warm Period are…'

'Joe,' he snaps with a certain grim finality, 'don't quote science at me. Just do it.'

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Continued at TechBookReport