Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Environmental Freakout (slight return)
Just been looking at James Lovelock's The Revenge of Gaia on Amazon and getting freaked out. This review in RealClimate seems a bit less doom laden but still not exactly comforting...
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Did anyone see the new David Attenborough the other night? Absolutely amazing. I fear future episodes are going to highlight the endangered nature of it all.
At least this stuff is gradually rising up the political agenda. We've got to have hope, as the alternative is nihilism, or buying a Hummer and enjoying it while we still can.
Yes, I do get more and more of a sense that it isn't just Fitzrovian Tuedayers that are worried about all this. I just can't see this translating into anything like the necessary political momentum, at least not in the short time we have before global catastrophe engulfs us. And that's just Europe - as far as I can tell, in much of North America, China, India and the developing world, environmental concerns barely register.
I don't know if that's always true - environmental stuff can be closely linked to economic/geopolitical issues for those countries, especially the ones without their own oil. Like I heard on the radio this morning that Brazil generates 65% of its energy from hydro electricity (not sure I heard right mind you, sounds unlikely). They also make loads of biofuels. But then they ruin it all by burning all the trees they chop down, becoming one of the worst greenhouse gas polluters in the process. China's massive 3 gorges dam will generate 10% of the country's electricity.
If you missed attenborough and can't get Seamus's links to work, its repeated on Saturday, BBC2, 6.30pm I think.
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