So recently I was having to explain the delay in doing anything about climate change since 1988, when it became a public policy issue, to a bunch of young women.

One of my go-to metaphors is if you’re dieting to get into a wedding dress, then if start six months before the wedding, losing a pound or two a week, it’s no problem.  Leave it later, and it’s starvation.  Leave it later still, and you’re looking at liposuction, bruising, pain and general horribleness.

Young women have enough crap going on with being body-shamed and all the rest of it that I decided, before opening my big fat patriarchal mouth, to come up with a different analogy.

This is what I came up with.

Imagine you’re invited to a party with y our friend.  You could walk – that’ll take about 60 minutes.  You could catch the bus, that’d take about 30 minutes. Or you could drive.

• If you keep playing on your X-box, until 50 minutes before you’re supposed to be at the party, then you’d have to run at least some of the way.
• If you stay on the X-box until 25 minutes, the only choice left is driving.
• If you leave it to five minutes to the party starts, you MIGHT still make it, by driving both illegally and like a maniac, but there is a good-to-excellent chance that you will kill innocent pedestrians and/or yourself.

I didn’t tell them that the party’s over and that they’re gonna be left with the clean-up.  Why spoil their day, eh?