on Jan 21st, 2007
Global Warming: Britain Under Threat
This evening, BBC1 aired a program with the above title. The Radio Times described it as…
“This sober, scientific programme looks at the scale of climate change that Britain faces in coming decades and what it might do to our way of life and countryside. The wise presence of David Attenborough, shaking his grey locks mournfully as he delivers dire warnings, is enough to make anyone take it seriously. But the programme is closely argued, too, with lively reports from Matt Allwright and Kate Humble that include a few surprises: changes to rainfall could pose as many problems as rising temperatures, for instance. Just ask the woman in Bewdley on the banks of the Severn, who after several inundations has wryly renamed her house ‘Dunfloodin’. “
I guess for the average Briton, this programme (if watched and believed) would be a bit of a shocker, although us hardened environmentalists will already be wise to it’s words of wisdom. The programme was great on it’s shock tactics but pretty light on the actions that people should taking to avoid the worse-case scenario.
They showed a Lotus sports car that runs on bio-ethanol and has a 0-60 time of 3.8 seconds - 0.3 seconds faster than it’s petrol equivalent. Why do they focus on performance and sports cars? They made a scant remark about the downside to bio-fuels - ie the amount of land required, yet failed to actually quantify it at all (if we switched to bio-fuels, we’d need more productive land for this alone that we currently have available in the UK.
The programme needed to clearly state the need for change - not just an acknowledgement of the situation, but the need for individuals to change their mind-sets and attitudes, and face up the hard decisions governments will have to make.
As George Monbiot points out in his book ‘Heat’, “People place their hope in unproven technologies, that ’scientists’ won’t let the collapse of the biosphere happen. Within the necessary timeframe, indeed, so our imaginations tell us, in the nick of time, they will deliver us from evil by inventing a device which harnesses nuclear fusion, artificial photosynthesis, hydrinos or solar power on the moon.” He continues “To succumb to hope of this nature is as dangerous as to succumb to despair.”
I viewed this programme, the british version of Al Gore’s film? It was light on pushing for urgent change, but at least it was on mainstream t.v. although I suspect that even now there are those who refuse to accept the evidence.