Monday, November 06, 2006

A Stern Warning


Well, I'm back! Missed me?

And if my in-box is anything to go by, I certainly have missed a heck of a lot while I was cut off in the wilds of Scotland these last several days.

It would appear that we have yet another report to get everyone excited (the Stern one, and I am not going to claim that my quick headline was by any means the first to make that pun). I think I gave up counting at 30 the number of press releases and/or comments from every quarter in my in-box. So I guess I should read it.

What would have been nice is that if anyone, anywhere, had anything new to say, especially anything positive or helpful. Hence I don't propose to cite any URLs here*. Type 'Stern' into Google and watch your browser explode.

On Sunday morning I was watching some religious programme on the Beeb, which as far as I could gather was making a theological pitch for the whole global warming debate. Fair enough; it's all getting rather apocalyptic.

Trouble is, like usual, the two guests I caught were straight out of the 'let's throw two polar opposites in the ring and see what repels most' school of media ratings hype. So we had some chubby yuppy capitalist in a suit saying the usual 'Why bother recycling', and the equally inevitable Earth-mother activist shaking her head and getting agitated.

As Corporal Fraser would say in Dad's Army, if this is all that we can manage... 'We're all doomed, I tell ye... doomed!'.

*OK, I changed my mind. I watched 'Have I Got News For You' the same night and it was mighty funny on this issue. Trouble is, they were mighty funny becuase they couldn't make head nor tail of it all and decided it was best to laugh it off.

That is of course one way. Here is a slightly more digestible form I've come across in the Guardian (potential editorial agenda noted) the next day, so we can try and, oo, I don't know... deal with it?