The Devil and Climate Change

I took a deep breath, stretched my calves, and composed myself. Then I hit the light switch and made a run for it, a dull orange glow filling the air as I hurtled down the corridor. Between ragged breaths, I counted the seconds of light I had left. Five. I could see the doorway in front of me. Four. I jinked round an ornamental hat stand. Three. I hopped over a carelessly laid length of telephone cable. Two. I fell to the floor, hissing in agony as I clutched my bloodied shin. I always forgot about the wrought iron shoe rack until it was too late. One. I mentally bemoaned the fact that a being with cloven hooves had no business owning a shoe rack, even a fine wrought iron one, in the first place. Zero. The light faded, the bathroom door disappearing into the darkness, just a few tantalising meters away. I lay in the darkness, rubbing my shin and suppressing the urge to curse out loud. Mrs Devil had a thing about swearing, and even though she’d recognise that a profane outburst would be entirely directed at her deserving husband, I didn’t want to upset her. After all, she lived here all the time, and had to put up with the old bastard’s machinations twenty four hours a day. At least I had the respite of going home to a house without timers on every light switch. A home where it was possible to reach the toilet without having to choose between sprinting in the dubious light cast by a crappy energy saving bulb, or groping your way along in the darkness.

The thing was, Satan’s energy saving initiative was kind of admirable in theory. I mean, who doesn’t want to reduce their carbon footprint a little, and make a tidy saving in the process? All that was needed were a few alterations around the house. Simple things at first. Proper lagging around the pipes. Foam in every cavity. A timed switch for every light. Of course, it wasn’t long before he went too far. He started insisting all the windows in the house were nailed shut in a bid to “conserve oxygen”, and laid turf in the lounge in an attempt to create a miniature carbon sink. The vacuum cleaner had been replaced by a pygmy goat, and I’d seen him working on designs for a microwave oven powered entirely by good vibrations. He’d even gone to the trouble of designing a special pump to remove excreta from the body without the need for wasteful flush toilets, but the EU were still withholding funding on that. Yes, Satan was truly embracing the green ethos. Which is why it was so sad to know that his intentions were both deluded and malicious.

Firstly, everyone knows that hell is powered entirely by the souls of the damned, and in any case its pretty much entirely sealed off to the mortal realm, so its carbon emissions, no matter how big or small, have zero impact on the world of men. Secondly, Satan wasn’t doing this out of altruism. No, it was pure professional jealousy. After all, he’d spent millennia turning hell into what OK! magazine had referred to as “the ultimate fire and brimstone experience”. What did people think they were doing? If he didn’t stop them, within a hundred years or so they’d have fire in the sky, rivers of dust and sulphuric oceans all of their own! And then what would be the point of hell? People would just turn up there and carry on as normal. Where was the eternal punishment in that? And so the infernal greenwash began.

It ended, however, on the 1st of December that year. As much as he wanted to prevent Earth becoming more hellish than well, hell, he was damned if they were going to outdo him on the Christmas lights as well.