Hot 'N' Cold

As I suspected it might, as the dust settled from Climate Gate and COP15 and a new government took over with new priorities, the issue of Climate Change has dropped quietly off the news radar.

But as matters of fiscal cuts and their consequences for people on the street rumble on under the coalition, environmental matters haven't just stopped while we sort out our finances. A heat wave and forest fire in Russia, and unprecedented monsoon rains causing widespread and disastrous flooding in Pakistan. Seemingly unconnected. But extreme weather events like these are likely to become more frequent as the world gets warmer.

And yet, even as a massive international aid effort slowly gathers momentum in Pakistan and the smog clears from Moscow, the world seems to be collectively shrugging it's shoulders and digging in it's pockets for small change.

The Stern Review is coming true, essentially. If these things are going to be more frequent, then we're going to be spending a lot on aid over the next few years. While we're supposedly too poor to rebuild our own schools or pay out unemployment benefit.

The thing about extreme weather is just that. It's extreme. It fucks shit up. There's an argument that the catalyst for the development of human society was a period of stable climate with few extreme weather events that made agriculture possible. Most crops are really quite sensitive to the conditions whilst in seed, germinating, cultivating and then ripening/fruiting. I mean sure, in the western world we have the capacity to simply change which crops, fruits and animals we raise, but that's going to happen at a cost. And that kind of adaptive capacity doesn't exist in the developing world. Subsistence farmers who've been growing the same staples for centuries are not going to be able to suddenly change. Their crops will simply fail and they will either starve or rely on western aid.

I don't have a point with this, especially. I'm just saying, if you're moved to donate some money to the Pakistan appeal, why not pay for it by driving 5 miles fewer a week, video-conferencing that meeting rather than flying, or turning the heating down a degree this winter. Cos that way you're tackling the cause as well as the effect.

If it doesn't make sense ideologically, then it certainly makes sense economically. And that seems to be the most important thing these days.