Time for a Copenhagen rant, surely. After all, if protesters can spend their time dressing up in fancy dress and throwing bricks at the police, I must be able to spin off a couple of lines. And I haven’t increased my carbon footprint by actually going to Copenhagen.
There have to be a few quick wins
which will help the climate, cost nothing and make everyone happy. So here are three:
- It’s freezing cold and you have to go Christmas shopping, for all those presents that no one really needs and all that food that you are obliged to eat, not to mention the drink. Don’t misunderstand me, I like Christmas and all its excesses. But what really winds me up is that the shops are all heated to about the sublimation point of carbon. You come in out of the biting wind in your down jacket, gloves and scarf, and suddenly you’re expected to spend up to an hour in an environment in which you could grow tropical species of plants. This, I assume, so that the staff have the luxury of working in t-shirts. What’s that all about? It’s bonkers. Not only do you feel overheated and quickly sweaty, encouraging you to leave the shop ASAP, but the shop is paying huge heating bills for the privilege. Surely only a moron would not think it a good idea to turn down the heating, save money, save the planet and make good PR out of doing so? Doh!
In Asia, it’s the opposite problem. There you are in your t-shirt because it’s about 40° outside, and in every building the aircon is so fierce that you have to add layers so as not to catch the flu. I once had to dig out my down jacket in Manila airport while I was waiting for a connecting flight. It was that cold. Solution, turn down the aircon, fools!
- Trees. Start planting them and stop cutting them. I drove on the motorway through France a few months ago, via Champagne. What a featureless place. Everywhere enormous fields of intensive agriculture stretching away into the distance. Not a hedge or a tree in sight. Hence, I suppose, no birds to eat the insects which are being bumped off with chemicals. And all this to produce EU mountains of subsidised food no one wants. So my idea: compulsory forest and hedge planting. More birds and animals, less soil erosion, less carbon. And leave the rain forests alone. It’s not as if Brazil is overpopulated.
OK, this isn’t going to save the
planet, but isn’t it better to do this than complain about farting cows? If
farting cows were the problem, you wouldn’t need a posse of world leaders in
Copenhagen.
