Green Musings

I've just seen An Inconvienient Truth for the second time, this time at the Student Union's Monday evening movie showings and I have to admit seeing it for a second time was even more powerful than the first. There is a mass of scientific data presented in it and I was able to digest it a lot better, and appreciate the reflective moments in the documentary too.

I've also returned to a relaxed piece of climate change commentary from Guardian editor Michael White, which I've reproduced here in full and I hope you enjoy:

The man in the fish shop was right about one thing. "Lovely weather, but a bit too lovely for February," I had observed. "It'll snow in a couple of days," he predicted, a man who keeps a professional eye on the shipping forecast. "Good, I was beginning to worry that global warming had finished off the British winter," I replied. "I think it'll be all right in our lifetime," the fish man reassured me.

But he's wrong, isn't he? The evidence of climate change is too great and too everywhere to be ignored. So naturally most of us are still managing to ignore it most of the time and in most of what we do. I sometimes feel as most people must have done in the 1930s when the gloom-mongers were banging on about Hitler. "Oh do shut up."

When the cold snap finally arrived and snow fell even on balmy London, it damaged a lot of early blossoms and ruined my three daffs - out a month early. I wore my overcoat for two days, its third outing this winter. True, I was on sabbatical in Australia for a while. But wait for this.
Much of Australia has had a drought for 10 years and you feel they are living on the edge of far greater climate change than we are. So no surprise when we woke up in Melbourne on Christmas Day to find the central heating had kicked in: they get what they call fast "cold changes" down there, winds from the Antarctic.

But a festive snowfall upstate overnight? In mid-summer? Handy, and helpful to dampen down some of the brush fires, which have been burning for months, but not good. Especially when another branch of the family was reporting little or no December snow in Toronto which is usually good for 15 or 20 inches.

Moscow too had a mild start to its annual big freeze, I read. Ditto New York. And so on. Every day there is a new report confirming serious fundamental problems with the polar ice caps or desertification in China. Britain's government promises a climate change bill. So do the newly-empowered Democrats in Washington.

Even George W Bush is starting to shift his ground, though few seem to think his modest plans to reduce US oil dependency is adequate to the situation, geopolitical as well as climatic, or that his alternative automobile fuels will do more than keep expensively subsidised American farmers happy.

But hey, let's not pick on George W again. Tony Blair and his ministers like to say we must act at many levels, international, national, local, individual. Do most of us do better? I suspect not. On the London Underground the other day I saw a Thames Water ad urging customers not to put the dishwasher on until it's actually full of dirty dishes. Do people really do that? Oh dear.
But who am I to talk. I can use public transport to go to work because I live in a city, so it's easier. But I keep a car rusting outside the house for increasingly less frequent use. Ok, there are five family members on the insurance, which isn't bad. But we all have so many bad habits.

You may drive a ridiculous gas-guzzler (those 4s4s aren't even very safe) or sign that petition on the No 10 website against the inevitability of road pricing. EasyJet may have introduced much cleaner planes than its cheap-flight rivals, but many of us still fly them and Gordon Brown's latest tax does not distinguish clean from dirty.

I've long noticed that young people like to say they now think globally but still tend to leave the lights on locally. That matters in our house where I've only just realised - stupid me - that those handy 50 watt halogen light bulbs we've been installing (so much better light) get hot because they're using a lot of juice. So much for my energy-saving bulbs in other rooms.

One way or another, I suspect most of us are a bundle of green contradictions. In Australia they are too, but they are also further into the debate. It's always been on the edge, most of it so dry. But public opinion polls put climate change as the No 1 issue and even prime minister, John Howard, is starting to take notice. Here's one you may not have heard about - yet: Do you know what "grey water'" is?

Nor did I. But it's the stuff you used once, in the dishwasher or the washing machine. It's not sewage, but it's not drinkable either. In Oz it is increasingly recycled as grey, though you draw it from purple taps so there's no mistake. It's for washing the car (I don't do that myself) or other lowly tasks.

Believe it or not, but on Boxing Day, The Australian newspaper carried an interesting poll below the photo of Peter Tuffley (who had never seen snow before) walking his girlfriend, Andrea Innes, through a winter wonderland (in summer). The poll reported that 70% of Australians would now be prepared to drink recycled sewage to help combat the national water crisis.

Yes, I realise that our own Institute of Civil Engineers (ICE) made a similar proposal here as recently as October, as have others. Actually the ICE said we'd have to drink the stuff too. Hands were raised in horror, they always are. And it's raining outside as I type. But the south-east is still gripped by its worst drought for a century and is now said to have less water per head than Egypt. We all have lots to talk about - and soon.