By now, everyone knows the earth is in trouble, even people who live in caves and the President of the United States. And no matter who you are, the world’s transformation into an unlivable wasteland has to be at the top of your list of problems. For instance, if you’re a football fan, whether or not Liverpool FC signs a decent midfielder is less important than whether Liverpool itself is lying under several feet of water, which would utterly ruin any chance they have at the Premier League title.

The leaders of the most powerful countries in the world just got together in Japan to discuss the environment. You might expect them to spend their days and nights working tirelessly to pass laws restricting gasoline consumption and make immediate, sweeping changes to the way the citizens of the developed world live. What they actually did, after flying in on individual carbon-burning jets, shaking hands with one another several times and visiting the local bondage fetish clubs, was to sign a treaty promising vaguely to cut carbon emissions in half by 2050.

The whole thing sounds like a smoker promising to quit after he finishes the pack. I’d speak out against it, but the treaty’s already been denounced by environmentalists, scientists, NGOs, and the Chinese, and I hate joining crowds.  

History is full of bad ideas: The Pogroms, The New Kids on The Block reunion, my ordering of Hawaiian pizza last night. But the prize for worst idea ever unquestionably goes to the bloke who decided to drill for oil.

In it’s natural state, oil is underground, which seems like a sensible place for a sticky, smelly, combustible, generally ill-disposed substance to stay. Getting it out of the earth is a huge undertaking, and one that involves huge machines tearing up the ground until the surrounding landscape looks like something that you would find on a Radiohead album cover:

I don’t get sentimental very often—unless breaking down and locking myself in a closet out of fear for the future counts as “sentimental”—but nevertheless, I had to brush a few tears from my eyes when the tour dirigible floated into London. The truth is, I miss England. Not in a patriotic way, of course, or in a nostalgic-for-my-youth way (the few memories of my childhood I haven’t blocked out are decidedly unpleasant), but simply because England is the best piece of land on earth, excluding certain remote regions which humans haven’t been able to ruin. It’s certainly the best stop on our tour. Here’s why:

-The weather is divine. After weeks of touring in warm climates where the sun is always shining and the skies are always clear, I feel like hanging myself with an organic hemp rope. Just in time, I arrive back in England, where the Thames is always dirty, it always rained yesterday, and the fog envelops the buildings like a beautiful shroud of depression, like the trench coat I wore in high school.

The Nude Remix competition has been over for about a month now, but I haven’t made a big deal about it. Quite frankly, there are better ways of spending my carbon than giving public recognition to some aspiring DJ living in his mother’s basement. 

But then I saw this video and, for the fourteenth time in my life, something cheered me up.

Well, the tour dirigible is chugging its merry, soy-fueled way across Europe right now. It's good to be out of the US, so I no longer have to worry about catching whatever disease the Americans have that makes them act the way they do.

But not everything is roses and carbon-neutral touring practices here. Today my Egyptian Tai-Chi was interrupted by Ed, who told me that Gene Simmons said our live act was “boring.”

“Gene Simmons?” I said. “You mean, the exercise bloke with the shorts?”

“No, that’s Richard Simmons,” Ed said. “Gene is that guy with the really long tongue and the makeup. He did that song about partying all night or some nonsense.”

“My God, Americans like that sort of thing?” I said. “I’m so glad we’re out of there.”

“I dunno, I liked that reality show he did,” Colin said, walking into the room. “His wife’s quite the looker. By the way, we’re out of donuts.”

“Shut the fuck up Colin,” I said. “You have terrible taste in everything. And I told you, we never had any donuts. Those were just old bagels you put sugar on.”

As you all know, I'm constantly spreading the word about the fact that the world is going to turn into a smoldering cinder unless we reduce our carbon emissions. Sometimes I feel like no one gets the message, like the other day when Ed threw a glass bottle into the garbage and I had to show him "An Inconvenient Truth" another five times. But I am alone no longer: today I turned on the television to discover--excuse the pun--that the Discovery channel launched a TV network devoted to all things Green.

I assume that they've been busy creating their schedule, and that's why they haven't called asking me to do a show. I mean, they gave a show to Tommy Lee and Ludacris, and they probably think the Kyoto Protocol is an act something only certain Japanese hookers can perform. So I figure it won't be too long before the Green Planet calls me. Until then, I'm working on a script for the pilot episode. Here's what I have so far:

We open with a shot of a empty plain. There should be no signs of life, no sound, and this shot should last for at least five minutes. Then we slowly pan to the left until we come to an antique television set, which turns itself on and shows a clip of a man eating porridge. What kind of porridge? We don't know.

We were in our tour dirigible, traveling to yet another godforsaken, car-filled American city, (Minneapolis? Seattle? I don’t even know anymore), and passing the time surfing ARPANET—the name for the Internet before it was cool—when Colin yelled over to me,
“Hey Thom, check this video out. I’ll send you the link.”

“It’s not another one of your fucking Lol Catz montages, is it?”

“No, it’s even better. It’s this guy, ‘The Prince,’ covering Creep at Coachella.”

“‘The Prince?’” I said. I had never heard of the guy, unless he meant Bonnie Prince Billy, who would probably do an awesome version of Creep, by the way.

“Uh, yeah, I think he calls himself ‘The Prince’ or his band is ‘The Princes,’ or something. He’s sort of like a gay version of Lenny Kravitz, as far as I can tell.”

“Good god, that sounds terrible. Definitely send me the link,” I said.

So minutes later I clicked on the video, only to discover that it had been taken down by The Prince, who claimed it was a copyright violation. A copyright violation? Sounds like someone is stuck in 1993.

Try as I might, I haven’t been able to avoid news that Jennifer Aniston, an American actress famous for one TV show, is dating John Mayer. I don’t read the celebrity tabloids, but John keeps sending me OMG-laden text messages about “Jen,” as he calls her, along with rather intimate photographs. If you’re reading this John: I am impressed with Ms. Aniston’s flexibility, but what you do in your bedroom (or while driving your convertible) should really be kept to yourself.

This reminds me of my resolve to never, ever date another celebrity (this means you, Bono). I’ve had chances, believe me, especially right after our-first-single-which-will-remain-nameless. Ed has tried to set me up with Winona Ryder—looks like I dodged a bullet there—and more recently, Lily Allen has left some rather incoherent and indecent voicemails on my phone. Even if I wasn’t already happily settled down, I would never even think of dating a starlet, especially an American. Why, you ask? Well:

-I would never sleep with anyone who George Clooney has already gotten to, and that rather limits my options.

-Female celebrities tend to spend a lot of time at the beach, so dating one would necessitate me buying a bathing suit. (I haven’t gone swimming since 1985, when I tried to drown myself in the North Sea.)

It’s widely known that Americans don’t enjoy football. Well, I suppose they have their version of “football,” which consists of extremely large, steroid-addled men running into each other as fast as possible and doesn’t seem to involve the “foot” at all. But real football never caught on in the US (or as I call it, the THEM), apparently because Americans find it “boring.”

Well, I’m no advertising executive (if I was, I’d do us all a favor and drown myself), but it seems to me the best way to market football would be to make it seem less boring. For instance, under no circumstances would I associate soccer with Coldplay’s music. But that’s exactly what ESPN is doing.

I suppose the idea is Americans have terrible taste—the number one single is by Rihanna, for Christ’s sake—and if you want them to enjoy a sport that actually involves continuous action and athletic skill, you have to package it with the blandest, most boring group to come out of the UK since the puritans.