By: Gašper Blažič
I humbly report, dear Golob’s government, that while you are enjoying your vacation, I am following your advice and using the train to avoid further burdening the already overloaded roads, which you decided (under the orders of the Levica party) not to renovate and expand. We must act ecologically and change our habits, after all.
But what can I do when my trip to Ljubljana by train from Celje ended so poorly? The one I boarded was already significantly delayed, and then in Zidani Most, I had a great difficulty transferring to the one continuing from Dobova to Ljubljana because someone forgot to unblock the exit doors, and upon reaching the platform, I did not know where the train to Ljubljana was (it was on the same track, which is not common), and I almost missed it. Then, in the Zagorje station, it stopped again. For an indefinite time. And no one knew what was happening. Technical problems, they said, and the track was practically impassable (even though they were allowing international trains to pass and also freight trains). The delay accumulated to a point that you could compare it to some backward banana republic. Yes, what is the use of super modern trains when the tracks are awful? Oh, right, they will say that is why we are renovating them, so we can travel well, comrades from the government. And of course, the air conditioning must be set to a minimum, so it will be quite hot on the new trains, and the air will be somewhat stale. But that is what the government decided, and we must trust them.
And so, I decided – since it was not worth it for me to wait two hours to get to Ljubljana (I was supposed to arrive regularly at ten o’clock, but I did not even have a guarantee for twelve o’clock), I got off at Zagorje and waited for a train going in the opposite direction. I returned to Celje, with the station staff and conductors themselves puzzled, not knowing what was happening. Naturally, they could not tell the passengers anything else but that the track was closed for an indefinite time (yes, fortunately, it was not due to some “boulder revolution” like in Knin). On my way home – the train arrived at the Zidani Most station with a delay similar to the travel time of a ferry between Lopar on Rab and Valbiska on Krk, that is, an hour and twenty minutes – I heard one of the passengers saying that the “technical difficulties” on the track are undoubtedly a consequence of climate change. Yes, we cannot escape them anywhere. Climate change even destroyed the Partisan hospital Franja. And first, we must renovate that facility for anything else in our country to function. Forget about the new Maribor infectious disease clinic, forget about healthcare reform – first, we need to address the Partisan cultural-health heritage as quickly as possible. Everything else, even urgent surgeries, can wait. Even the few thousand users who have been without electricity for six days and have to throw their food from the freezer into the compost because it has already gone bad. All due to climate change, of course. And, naturally, we must trust the government; they surely know what they are doing, right? I am just waiting for Asta Vrečko to become the Minister of Health if Prime Minister Golob gets overwhelmed with work.
Today, as I write this, meteorologists are forecasting another package of natural-based airborne landings. And, once again, they will blame climate change for them, claiming that such storms did not exist forty years ago. Perhaps some occasional hail here and there, but otherwise just some rain and thunder (well, the power used to go out more frequently back then, so we sometimes experienced power cuts even without forecasts, quite spontaneously). That was it. Because of climate change, our government is struggling; because of climate change, we have more and more migrants; because of climate change, the opposition is nagging… Oh, and yesterday, Earth was hit by a solar storm, causing the global average temperature to rise by one degree in just a few hours. And when, if it happens today, hail falls and winds blow off roofs, they will once again blame climate change, or perhaps NATO, for artificially creating storms over Slovenia (yes, we have been getting only storms over our country recently, haven’t we?). Who knows what their reasons are. They say it is because we cancelled the contract to purchase boxers. If you believe that.
I say: stop with this burping about climate change. And remove Greta from the internet and small screens because it is becoming utterly tasteless. The government is preparing a euthanasia law, which will make silent killings, especially of elderly individuals, legal. And, we have long kicked God out of the public sphere. Some even want to change children’s genders. Where is the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah? And then we get upset about storms that are slowly leading us into a great famine, as our already weak self-sufficiency will soon be close to zero, and we will truly depend only on imported produce. Oh, of course, the blame is on climate change, because apparently, we eat too many Carniolan sausages, drive cars too much, and use air conditioning.
No, climate change is not to blame for our troubles, but rather a deficit of intelligence, faith, and ethics.