Skipper

I've long argued that in relation to the good things of life, most of us are addicts: we can't think of doing without our cars, cheap flights, lashings of food, booze and the rest. And like most addicts we are in denial but unlike alcoholics who claim they can handle the booze, consumers say there is no problem to solve in the first place; mind you, they would also deny being addicted to consumption as well. Evidence of all this is now provided in today's Observer where we learn that a majority of Britons, according to an Ipsos MORI poll, still refuse to accept that climate cghange is caused by human agency.

And this in spite of the Stern Report of 2006, ubiquitous government statements, a whole campaign by David Cameron and a UN report by 2500 scientists in 2007 which should have established human culpability beyond the slightest of doubts. The Observer suggests that the environment has been downgraded in our concerns by: the Channel 4 'debunking' The Great Global Warming Swindle; the recent dissenting book by Nigel Lawson and others; and the fact that relative economic hard times are back with us for the first time in a decade. What does this show?

Fairly obvious I would have thought. I have a friend, highly intelligent well informed, who dismisses global warming as untrue and says even if it is it's not going to stop him indulging as many pleasures as he wishes for as long as he can enjoy them. And I suspect such attitudes- mostly undeclared- are commonplace within western societies. Phil Downing of MORI is quoted as saying:

'People are broadly concerned, but not entirely convinced; despite many attempts to broaden the environment movement, it doesn't seem to have become fully embedded as a mainstream concern,'.

This is very depressing and bodes ill for any genuine attempt to attack a process which will flood the world's low-lying cities and turn vast tracts of farmland into dust bowls. Doomy I know, but I suspect we'll only be ready to do something when it's already too late.