Ok. One hates to say it's the same old same old but, it's the same old same old. Those Saudi sheiks must have learnt the fine arts of flim-flam, rip-off and blackmail inside the Washington beltway.

They just had a pow-wow in the appropriately named city of Jidda. This is where they specialize in chopping off any hopes for a cooler, cleaner world, and the right hand of anyone who draws newspaper cartoons they don't find funny. A boardroom the size of the Yankee Stadium was set up, befitting the vast amount of farce that went on there. All the big energy big cheeses were there. US Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman arrived, which boded ill right from the get-go. That great stand-up comic, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia hosted the nonsense. He acted like he was auditioning for Lawrence of Arabia, The Silent Sequel. Multiple energy ministers turned up on their taxpayer-funded first-class tickets. The heads of every oil-producing country were also there, guaranteeing that nothing would be achieved. To round off the burlesque, there were the heads of every major energy company, and tanker loads of the usual brown-noses, all scrambling to get on prime time, nodding their heads behind their bosses like those dogs on the back shelves of New York taxis.

All and sundry used up thousands of tons of fossil fuels to get there, fulfilling their sacred duty to melt the icebergs and drown the polar bears. They lodged themselves in seventeen-star hostelries- no booze, alas- turned up the AC to cool themselves down and warm up the planet, were careful not to touch their penises with their right hands, then used up a whole load more of fossil fuel in their fleets of Mercedes to get to the meeting room, two floors down. Don't walk, it's un-cartel.

Arrivals was like the Annual Academy Awards, hold the boobies. There was a military band, about as out of tune as the US Congress. There were security guys mumbling into the iPods, hoping Clint Eastwood was watching. And the Mercedes. Enough Mercedes to sink Montana. It looked like the parking lot art the supermarket on Jupiter Island. No-one turned off the AC. No-one turned off the German-engineered V8s. Gotta melt those pesky icebergs fore they invade Mamlaka al-?Arabiyya as-Su?udiyya.

Then, they all sat around the baseball stadium, gazing at one another through high-powered binoculars. Presumably the AC was on at thirty below, enough to cool the Sahara, turn the Antarctic into another Acapulco. Presumably, someone said something, when not posing for CNN, praying to get on Lou Dobbs. (To change the subject a sec. You notice how he's slimming down? He's prolly working up towards a segment on "Anorexia: Is This The Answer To Our Broken Borders?") At any rate, everyone sat around, being important, blackmailing the world with their black gold.

And you know?

Yeah, you guessed.

Nobody decided nothing. Zip. Ziltch. Nada. Well, not quite. They all agreed to kill alternative, earth-friendly fuels at birth. They all heaped praises on the Hummer. And they all agreed to use a whole lot more fossil fuel getting home. Then they agreed to repeat the same obscene waste of money, ecology and our patience, in London this fall.

Listen. When Jay Leno, and Jerry Seinfeld retire, there will be no dearth of stand-up co0mics to replace them. The Oil Cartel Comedy Hour. It's called black humor.

David Lovattsmith uses next to no fossil fuel, being an old fossil himself.