I’m having a little difficulty looking out of the window, splattered as it is with a random pattern of countless raindrops. But I can see enough to be aware that the streets are wet, the rain is falling and the trees are being bent double by a strong wind. It looks like January.
I go out to the newsagent to get my morning paper and it is only then it becomes apparent that it’s not January, but September. Because the air temperature is mild, the wind bending the trees is warm. You might need a waterproof but you won’t need a winter coat.
At the newsagent the stack of papers is full of, “The Lucozade Bombers”; British Islamic militants who have been jailed after being caught planning to blow up passenger planes heading to America from Heathrow airport. Their justification is Britain and America’s invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Much is made of the potential to kill more than a thousand innocent people and how police and security services stopped this happening.
I read intently of their suicide videos and their apparently ordinary backgrounds. But when the paper is folded back into place and put to one side I look at the rain in September and wonder who is doing more damage to the world ? Islamic fundamentalists or the rest of us, who are first to complain about the weird weather but fail to recognise we are its cause.
David Milliband’s so concerned about climate change he is to tour Europe warning of rising flood tides, disappearing coastal towns and cities and, apparently, alligators basking on the shores of Sweden.
Guardian readers are worried too. They are pledging to cut their environmental footprint by ten per cent in a year. Which is nice. But the world does not consist of David Millibands or Guardian readers alone. It is mainly populated by people who see it as essential to life to burn fossil fuels, to relentlessly consume things they don’t need, who cannot make changes to their lives that involve restraint and self-sacrifice in order to stop damaging the planet for future generations.
And today’s democratic politicians have to pander to that great mass in order to retain their power. The Greenland ice melts, Kenya’s arable land is left without water turning it into worthless scrub where farmers can no longer make a living and we moan about 50 days consecutive rainfall on Skye.
But that cannot be allowed to disturb our ability to drive cars, fly in planes, turn the heating up full blast and oppose an increasing number of windfarms because they spoil the view. Our politicians cannot confront climate change, they have to work out ways to mitigate it without upsetting the people who vote for them. And that, at the moment, is proving impossible.
They will all meet up in Copenhagen in December to thrash out a new agreement which some will refuse to accept and others will fail to implement. And in 50 or a hundred years time people will pay; millions will starve because of drought-induced famine as farmland becomes desert, and millions more will have to move their homes away from coastlines.
Someone once asked me what I thought people should do to reduce the impact. I said, stop driving cars and use the bus and train. I said stop drilling for oil and gas and instead generate the world’s entire power needs from re-newable sources. They said that will never happen. And they are right.
Bans on private vehicles and stopping fossil fuel extraction is too difficult, it damages too many vested interests and it underlines just how powerless democratic politicians are to make changes that will benefit everyone in the long term. Instead they will introduce half-measures which already are not working.
It is far easier to tell us how they are looking after our safety by jailing would-be suicide bombers and fighting the Taliban. And we can go on believing that lie, while making sure we don’t leave the telly on standby, safe that the world is a better place.
I go out to the newsagent to get my morning paper and it is only then it becomes apparent that it’s not January, but September. Because the air temperature is mild, the wind bending the trees is warm. You might need a waterproof but you won’t need a winter coat.
At the newsagent the stack of papers is full of, “The Lucozade Bombers”; British Islamic militants who have been jailed after being caught planning to blow up passenger planes heading to America from Heathrow airport. Their justification is Britain and America’s invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. Much is made of the potential to kill more than a thousand innocent people and how police and security services stopped this happening.
I read intently of their suicide videos and their apparently ordinary backgrounds. But when the paper is folded back into place and put to one side I look at the rain in September and wonder who is doing more damage to the world ? Islamic fundamentalists or the rest of us, who are first to complain about the weird weather but fail to recognise we are its cause.
David Milliband’s so concerned about climate change he is to tour Europe warning of rising flood tides, disappearing coastal towns and cities and, apparently, alligators basking on the shores of Sweden.
Guardian readers are worried too. They are pledging to cut their environmental footprint by ten per cent in a year. Which is nice. But the world does not consist of David Millibands or Guardian readers alone. It is mainly populated by people who see it as essential to life to burn fossil fuels, to relentlessly consume things they don’t need, who cannot make changes to their lives that involve restraint and self-sacrifice in order to stop damaging the planet for future generations.
And today’s democratic politicians have to pander to that great mass in order to retain their power. The Greenland ice melts, Kenya’s arable land is left without water turning it into worthless scrub where farmers can no longer make a living and we moan about 50 days consecutive rainfall on Skye.
But that cannot be allowed to disturb our ability to drive cars, fly in planes, turn the heating up full blast and oppose an increasing number of windfarms because they spoil the view. Our politicians cannot confront climate change, they have to work out ways to mitigate it without upsetting the people who vote for them. And that, at the moment, is proving impossible.
They will all meet up in Copenhagen in December to thrash out a new agreement which some will refuse to accept and others will fail to implement. And in 50 or a hundred years time people will pay; millions will starve because of drought-induced famine as farmland becomes desert, and millions more will have to move their homes away from coastlines.
Someone once asked me what I thought people should do to reduce the impact. I said, stop driving cars and use the bus and train. I said stop drilling for oil and gas and instead generate the world’s entire power needs from re-newable sources. They said that will never happen. And they are right.
Bans on private vehicles and stopping fossil fuel extraction is too difficult, it damages too many vested interests and it underlines just how powerless democratic politicians are to make changes that will benefit everyone in the long term. Instead they will introduce half-measures which already are not working.
It is far easier to tell us how they are looking after our safety by jailing would-be suicide bombers and fighting the Taliban. And we can go on believing that lie, while making sure we don’t leave the telly on standby, safe that the world is a better place.
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