The Skakagrall

'...shaking people out of complacency will take a strong incentive...'

No kidding. Of course a little leadership would help. But then... (y'know, I mean, at the end of the day) that's the tricky thing about the environment. It's only when a tornado blows the roof off your house that it ever feels like a priority. And governments only ever deal in priorities...

Let's think. Never mind the scientists (always the last to catch up) - how long have we REALLY known the environment was in trouble? Since the late 60s?

Now if we could just whip up a tornado to blow the roof off Westminster Hall... THEN we'd see some emergency legislation, toot sweet...

(Except they'd probably blame it on Brian Haw)

American news above, of course.

I've been meaning to do some more work on the British side, however from the information gathered so far, my impression is that the government here, pretty much in a kind of tacit collusion with the other parties, have presented climate change as an abstract problem.

They've claimed the moral high ground making statements about the problem, while actually allowing the power generating companies to pretty much do what they want - which in the last few years has been to burn more coal and actually increase CO2 emissions.

I think the politicians are cynical about it all. They reckon (rightly of course) that Britain is too small to matter much when it comes to the climate, so they take the easy option of trying to influence other countries instead.

From the figures I have seen so far, it seems that what we should do is close down coal-burning power stations which emit far more CO2 than oil/petrol/gas power stations and transport. This would mean putting a large number of people out of work in five or six Labour constituencies.