A call to arms on climate change
In today's report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we have a mayday alert. The fourth scientific assessment from this expert group in 17 years tells us that the first tank battalions have already broken through the border. Reading between the committee-written lines one can sense the panic.
In 1990, I listened to the scientists who had completed the IPCC's first assessment in a Berkshire hotel. At a press conference, Margaret Thatcher, not otherwise known for eco-doom-mongering, warned the report would "change our way of life", and that we would cry out in the future not for oil, but water. The world seemed to be listening. The UN called for multilateral negotiations and most governments signed up. But these have run now for 16 years, and have done little to stem greenhouse gas emissions.
Take to the fields
The tipping point of global oil production will be accompanied by a dire energy shock, and we will have to redefine the concept of farming.
On Friday and Saturday last week, a potentially historic meeting took place in the rather unpromising location of the CIA, otherwise known as the Cardiff International Arena. Britain's organic farming community gathered en masse for the annual meeting of the Soil Association, and their theme was peak oil and farming in the post-petroleum era. Organisers and peak-oil whistleblowers alike thought that perhaps this was the first time an organisation in a critically affected sector has held a conference on the theme of peak oil.
He pulled his punches
David Attenborough's special TV programme on the impact of climate change on Britain was deeply disappointing.
The first 50 minutes of Sir David Attenborough's prime-time 60-minute special floated us gently through the soft problems of minimal global warming, assuming no feedback amplifiers or wild cards like collapsing ice sheets. Our Victorian drains will be a little hard pressed not to flood with a bit more winter rain, so build new sewers. Britain's southern counties will have a bit more drought, so build a big reservoir. Crop regimes are changing, so grow olives. Well into the programme, Sir David observed that if we fail to control our burning of fossil fuels by 2050, "the British countryside will be a very different place." Really?