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War On Earth

by | 14th, December 2006

DAVID Attenborough has emerged from the thinning undergrowth what was once a dense evergreen jungle made into scrub and tumbleweeds.

The Times listens in. The BBC’s stand-in voice of God is ready to speak. Says he: “I grew up during the war and during the war it was a common value that wasting food was wrong.”

It was. Food was rationed. We do not doubt that people would have gorged themselves into obesity given half the chance but there was not the stuff to go around.

And for food read energy. Attenborough says we are wasting our energy. “There should be a general moral view that wasting energy is wrong. It doesn’t matter if it’s a tiny bit or a big bit. It’s a general attitude to life.”

This analogy between wartime and energy could be a little misguided, given that the war involved a spectacular waste of human life and gas was less a cooking aid than a weapon of choice.

Perhaps it would be better to alter the analogy of life in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, when energy was conserved with a swift hoe to the neck?

But we take the point. The world is heating up. As Attenborough says: “Everything we do goes up and stays up for 100 years in terms of carbon dioxide. The more it does, the hotter it will get.”

So stop. Stop doing anything that involves unleashing carbon dioxide, that gaseous, invisible Satan Bug. Of course, CO2 is a by product of being alive, and if you would be so kind as to…

No, no. This is bigger than your own sacrifice. This is the death of all mankind and all living things. The world is heating up.

As the Guardian reports, 2006 has been the hottest year on record. Readers learn that temperatures logged by weather stations across England reveal an average temperature of 10.84C.

“Our climate models show we should be getting warmer and drier weather in the summer, and warmer and wetter in the winter, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing," says Phil Jones, director of the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia. "I cannot see how else this can be explained."

All but one of the 10 warmest years in Britain have occurred in the past 18 years. And we are not in isolation. The world is heating up with us. The 10 warmest years ever have all occurred in the past 12 years, says the Guardian.

Things are changing. Things are changing fast. But what to do? Turn off the power, shut down and wear an extra fleece to keep warm?

Or just enjoy yourself, realise that little will be done and talking about it only exacerbates the problem…



Posted: 14th, December 2006 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink