Is it hot enough for ya yet?

Mandy Nolan

This past week I had a terrible realisation. As we fail to meet our carbon emission reduction targets it puts me right on schedule with experiencing being menopausal in a time of global warming. It reminds me of that book, Love in the Time of Cholera, except it’s The Change in the Time of The Change.

Bloody hell. It’s an emergency. If we’d been in charge this wouldn’t have happened. Please put middle-aged women at the steering wheel right now. We’d crank the temperatures down quick bloody smart. None of this fluffing around with reduction targets.

The Barrier Reef has experienced severe bleaching with just a 0.4 degree Celsius rise in water temperature. I really relate to coral. Global carbon emissions continue to rise at around three per cent a year and if we exceed a climate increase of two degrees then we’re stuffed. Violent weather events, sea-level rises, salination, the destruction of the food bowl and it will be fricking hot!

No menopausal woman is going to tolerate a temperature increase of two degrees. No, you let us have a good old-fashioned crack at carbon management and I promise you in the next few years we’ll have us slipping into a very refreshing ice age. Why, just the other day during a hot flush I lay on the floor at the Woolies deli and wondered if I could get into the bottleshop coolroom. Just this week I was so hot I was certain I was about to die. I don’t ever recall feeling this hot. I have to sleep with a wet flannel on my face. Tonight if it happens again I’m going to run a tub of cold water and sleep in there. Or break into the local swimming pool for a midnight dip.

Right now millions of menopausal women are cursing capitalism and the climate-changing scourge of industrialisation. At this point I’m happy to go back to the spinning wheel and simple rock-based technology. I’ll sleep in a cave and go naked; just turn down the heat.

I just don’t think we’re doing enough. For a start I don’t think the Copenhagen Accord took menopausal women into account when listing critical impacts of climate change. If we get expected temperature rises then menopausal women might very well become extinct. Imagine a world without cranky old women!

I’m starting to develop my own climate change conspiracy. I’m not saying that the government invented it to sell solar panels and sunscreen; no, I’m not a climate change denier. Anyone lying in a pool of sweat gasping for air would be a fool to deny the planet is heating. My conspiracy involves a theory that it’s a patriarchal strategy to rid the world of middle-aged women.

Once we’ve fulfilled our hot lusty breeding years we’re really just in the way, and as we tend to go off sex entirely, live longer than men, and complain about stuff. Let’s face it, we are a drain on the system and we’re not even hot any more. Well, temperature-wise we are, but that’s it. What better way to cut down our numbers than to crank up the oven a few notches. Overly emotional menopausal women dropping off like flying foxes in Casino.

Like the frog and the flying fox, menopausal women are an indicator species. In a cool environment they thrive, but heat just knocks them out. Injured animals have WIRES or Greenpeace to care for them, but who out there is raising money for a menopausal-women shelter – like a giant air-conditioned Ikea. Except it can’t be air-conditioned. Because air-conditioning is part of the emissions problem.

Prepare for the worst, my menopausal sisters. This calls for a carbon revolution. It’s time to unplug. You go first. I just need ten more minutes in front of the fan.