26 January 2007

High in the Alps

This week I’m in Davos helping to make programmes for the BBC. Fitting then that one of the themes of the WEF this year is climate change. Confirmation that 2006 was the year that global warming became ‘mainstream’ – the sweltering planet seems to be near if not at the top of much of the coverage I’ve managed to catch (in between slogging through snowbanks and eating fondues). On the programme I’m on you can hear the CEO of Orange talk about whether climate change will affect business travel (5:30 p.m. on Saturday, Radio 4!). Also just caught a debate on CNBC. The audience voted overwhelmingly against:
-Clean coal and nuclear are the only viable alternatives to oil.
-Markets are better than regulation.
-A global carbon tax will do more harm than good.
Note that the participants included a lot of business converts to the green agenda as well as the most high-profile activists; perhaps a better survey would include everyone here. Still – interesting

10 January 2007

Go North!

The European Environment Agency came out with a report today detailing some of the cultural changes that will occur because of climate change. Tourism could be affected in the Med; more people will die in Southern Europe because of heat (but fewer in Northern Europe because of cold). We could be eating different types of fish. As usual the Independent is out front, putting the story on their front page, but also as usual their tone is alarmist and generally lacking in solutions. The Indy is becoming a strange beast, an environmental tabloid.
I rarely buy a paper these days (I read online or at the office) but I picked up the Sunday Observer over the weekend (well actually Rachel bought the thing, I picked it up when she got home). Interesting article here about Haparanda-Tornio in Sweden/Finland, and how global warming and an international flavour might make it a really nice place to hang out. But here it seems to me that the economics are a bit fuzzy. Ikeas are everywhere, and the fact that 'firms carrying goods from China to Europe will send their ships through the ice-free North East Passage' won't make the place rich. If busy ports equalled cultural and economic power, Grimsby would be the capital of the United Kingdom.

02 January 2007

New Year

My green new year's resolutions:
1. Make an effort to take bags to the supermarket and to refuse a new one when the cashier shoves my shopping in without me asking.
2. Save paper cups at work for compost, and continue my quixotic crusade to have styrofoam banned from the BBC.
3. Stop doing the washing up with the water running and no plug (Rachel says this is 'abhorent').

Hopefully it won't be a case of Rhetoric Up, Action Down - as it seems 2006 was. Also pointed out by Rachel (another one of her resolutions is 'stop abusing husband') is this blog by Anna Shepard of The Times.