I must say it certainly got a few of the Forum pages we play with quite excited, unsurprisingly. Not to mention the media, though it seems to be restricted to an unsurprisingly limited few of the majors:
Anyway, to counter the downer of yesterday's commentary, here's one to cheer you up: Tony Juniper: There is no reason to despair http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article339059.ece Signs of climate change do not confirm that the point of no return has been reached
Mr. Juniper is another hugely experienced and well respected individual in this arena, so we must also take him seriously.
Thing is, and as the title above pretty much covers it I don't propose to analyse his piece in detail, we now have two eminent, concerned voices saying pretty much two different things - not about what's happening, or indeed why we need to address them, but the consequences.
I tend to err on the side of Mr. Juniper as there really is no other choice. And what I do like is that he shares areas of positive behaviour, though again they still tend to feel somewhat remote from the point of view of this person in the street.
What we do need to ensure is that people don't 'give up'. Which is why this article on the reaction of the green community (as opposed to..?) to Prof. Lovelock's piece is worth scoping:
It's quite interesting, as I have often felt many of 'them' have alienated the public with a rather unremitting diet of 'we're all doomed' messages. Now they are in the position of saying 'it's not quite that bad yet'. Quite correctly, if it were then we might as well just kick back and go out with a bang.
I do note this, however, from Mr. Porritt: "If there was one scientist you would listen to on a proposition of that kind, it would be Jim Lovelock. Is he right? I simply don't know. I'm not enough of a scientist to make a judgement. With many people you would be tempted to dismiss the idea, but Jim is different."
So maybe we're not getting quite such opposing views here as first thought.
As we are more about factual and/or objective information that can lead to positive solutions and/or actions, and stuff with which the consumer can easily engage, I tend to restrict Junkk.com's participation in such things to this blog (plus our entirely uncontrollable Forum) as it is still all so up in the air, and frankly there are many out there who know much more about it. But it doesn't stop me having concerns, and an opinion.
That said, debate my be healthy, but delay could be deadly, and that makes me part of the problem as I see it.
So, when I look at the amount of resources I am consuming with what is, basically hot air, I think it may be better to focus more on doing our little bit in promoting lots of little bits that cost nothing (in every sense) and can cumulatively help a lot.
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