Here is a summary of the theme of this website in a short paragraph.  

The world is now full of differing opinions about climate, ranging from extremely gloomy views put forward, for example, by James Lovelock, to complete denial that there is any problem at all, maintained, for example, by sceptics like Christopher Booker.  There are a thousand books and a million newspaper articles.  Some scientists, it is true,  deny completely that humans are playing a major role in climate change. No wonder people are confused.  The majority of the scientists, however, and really it is the great majority, are telling us both that we have a serious problem and that we are causing it.  But even this does not get us that much further, for minorities have often been right in the history of science. We must hope that the minority are right.  But what if they are wrong?  The consequences of doing nothing would then be so grave, it is surely prudent to follow the view of the scientific majority.  Oil is going to run out in the foreseeable future in any case, and almost certainly its price will rise and rise.  Even from an economic point of view it makes sense to wean ourselves from oil.   But above all, we should see this as an opportunity, not just a potential catastrophe.  Its energy base is so fundamental in any society, to change it would almost be like starting again.   We could build a much better post-fossil fuel world.                                                                                                                                                

From this a number of conclusions follow.

1. Since the majority of scientists are predicting a very difficult future indeed if we don’t deal decisively with this problem, it is surely crazy to ignore them
2. Since it is a very big problem it is not going to be solved without a very big effort, so this is something we need to go all out to achieve, a half-hearted response is useless.
3. Big efforts are made with the heart as much as with the head, so what we need to think about before anything else is resolve in the heart. If we can make that, the practical effects will follow.
4. Given the present lukewarm and confused state of public opinion, radical action is politically difficult, if not impossible  What this website wants to encourage is a profound alteration in the public view, brought about by dedicated action and example.  
5. Climate change is not all bad news. A post-fossil fuel world could be cleaner, safer, quieter, healthier, more convivial, happier.  It is important to focus on the positive rather than just seeking to avoid the negative.

Change of heart is what this website is about.  We are attempting to deal with the climate issue in a mood of resentful reluctance.  This is hopeless and doomed to failure.  What we need to see above all things is that we are on the brink of a new age, which could be far more wonderful than the one that is passing.  Not only do we have to take the measures that will avert climate disaster.  We need to welcome them in a spirit of excitement and anticipation.  We can’t change the world overnight.  But we can change our hearts.   If we want to achieve the first, the second is the indispensable initial condition.

There are so many books about climate it might seem that we are in danger of deciding nothing, not because there is too little information but too much. Probably the best short account of the science from the consensus point of view can be found either in the Frequently Asked Questions section of the IPCC report on May 4th 2007, or The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery.  A very good book when it comes to the technology of what we can do about it is Sustainable Energy: Without The Hot Air by David J.C. MacKay of the Physics Department of Cambridge University, who conveniently provides a short and free 10 page summary of his ideas on his book’s website. If you read nothing else read these three succinct accounts.  The best book advocating urgent action is George Monbiot's Heat.  On the sceptical side two extremely challenging books are The Real Global Warming Disaster by Christopher Booker and An Appeal  to Reason by Nigel Lawson.  The major question we have to ask ourselves is not a scientific one but a moral one.  Are we prepared to risk the dire predictions of the scientific consensus, for the future of people who are now children, by believing Lawson and Booker rather than the IPCC?  The view taken here is surely no.  Since oil is getting dearer and scarcer, leading almost certainly to a volatile world and possibly armed conflict, does it not make sense to take advantage of the present window of opportunity and change our energy base, difficult as that would be, before tensions over oil become acute, apart from the climate issue?  Surely yes.   
 

Despite the extremely influential journalists who are dedicated to ensuring that nothing serious is done about climate, most people now accept that there is a problem. But most do not understand how great that problem is, if the consensus scientists are right, and the grave peril in which we, and even more our children, are in.  Many people think, if they accept that there is a problem at all, that there is a direct relationship between the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere and the rise in temperature.  If we carry on as we are but moderate our emissions of carbon somewhat, they imagine, the problem can be contained But this is not the problem.  The danger comes not from us, but from nature itself.  More about this below.  The really important issue is the carbon cycle, but in the popular mind this crucial factor is poorly understood. The real nub of the issue is this. Once through the use of fossil fuels we have neutralized the natural cooling mechanisms that hold global warming in check, and we are now very, very close to doing that, those mechanisms do not simply cease to work, they go into reverse and start adding to the temperatures that they had previously restrained. Once this process has started, global warming will start causing itself, and increases in temperature will lead to further increases in an ever escalating positive feedback loop that will have escaped from our control.

Would only a complete fool would fail to heed the dire warnings that we are being given? Or would only a complete fool believe them?  The vast majority of climate scientists and all the official scientific bodies are telling us that a rise of 2 degrees is the crucial point at which this positive feedback could start. If we cannot halt the present rate of increase in carbon emissions, we may reach that crucial level, the famous tipping point, as early as 2015. But, because there is a time lag between the emission of carbon and its effect on temperature, even if we do reach the all-important level of emission increase by 2015, it would probably not be until about 2030 that this would translate itself into a temperature rise of 2 degrees. But the rise would be inevitable, and according to IPCC and most of the scientists, this in turn would almost certainly lead to further rises which could be by anything between 3 and 6 degrees. At 3 degrees, the science predicts, there will be severe hurricanes and droughts, widespread famines and water shortages, and - knowledge of human nature might well suggest - ferocious resource wars that might well go nuclear. At 4 degrees the monsoons and Himalayan river systems that feed Asian agriculture would be severely affected, leaving hundreds of millions short of food. Last time that global temperature rose by 6 degrees 95% of all species were destroyed. You would have thought that only a complete fool would fail to heed these dire warnings and fail to go all out to stop using fossil fuels before it is finally too late. Are we that  complete fool?  The question we have to put to ourselves is not that of deciding which scientists are right.  Most of us are quite incompetent to do that.  It is: are we willing to risk on behalf of our children that Booker and Lawson are to be trusted?  It is not primarily a scientific one, it is a moral one.  The view taken here is that since, if the sceptics are wrong and we follow their advice, the future consequences will be so terrible, and since oil is going to run out in the foreseeable future anyway, and since it is unthinkable that the earth can support another billion people living the western consumer lifestyle let alone the ten billion who are forecast to be inhabiting the planet by 2050, we have a clear moral obligation to follow the advice of the scientific majority.  Even many people who agree that something needs to be done fail to see, if the concensus is right, the urgency with which we must get rid of fossil fuels.

Yet global warming is not all bad news. It is entirely possible technologically to replace fossil fuels, and, because a change of energy base would have such radical repercussions, once we had done so the opportunity would be there to create a gentler, more peaceable, more just, greener, quieter, safer, happier and healthier world. But going all out to replace fossil fuels while it is still possible to use them – like stopping smoking before the doctors actually tell you that you have lung cancer - will be extremely difficult and before all else will require great moral effort. Yet even in doing it there would be many advantages and rewards. Building all those offshore wind farms and re-roofing the UK would create a great deal of employment. Because renewable fuels do not exhaust themselves we would not be in competition with other nations for dwindling resources. The most likely reason why we might get involved in future wars would be removed. Once the initial investment had been made, energy would be much cheaper, with all the incalculable benefits that would bring. Making the effort would pull us together as a nation, much as fighting Hitler did in 1940. We do not have a technological problem but we do have a huge problem of political will, and above all we lack leadership. Decisive leadership on this issue is forthcoming from neither church nor state, so we are going to have to provide it for ourselves. To combat climate change we are going to have to make radical changes in the way we live. But all experience teaches one that such conversions do not occur just in the intellect, they require a profound change of heart. The point of this website is to try to encourage habits of living which might help to bring about that change of heart.

If you want to join Focus On Our Future, you are asked to do one, and preferably all, of four things.
 

1. Consider and if necessary change your personal life style in relation to climate change
2. Join, or start, a climate action group in your area
3. Invest money in companies concerned with renewables, perhaps through an ethical bank
4. Practise 20 minutes meditation a day. This is not necessarily anything to do with religion, though for many people it will be. In contrast with any other animal we have rich and variegated hidden inner lives. To achieve significant moral change we have to try and take control of them.

The Website will therefore have six sections, which develop all of the above.
 

1. Why the sceptical journalists could be wrong about climate, and why the problem is so serious.
2. Personal Life style
3. Action Groups
4. Investment
5. Meditation
6. A space for people to air their ideas, report their experiences and converse with each other.

1.WHY THE SCEPTICS MIGHT BE WRONG ABOUT CLIMATE (If you are not interested in the science feel free to skip this section).

Sceptical arguments sound quite sensible. We should have great respect for Melanie Phillips and Christopher Booker and, most especially, Nigel Lawson.  Unlike so many, they do not hypocritically pay lip service to greenery while doing almost nothing to take the uncomfortable measures that would have to be taken, if the consequences of the global warming  that so many adopt as little more than a fashion accessory are to be averted.  At least the sceptics know where they stand, have a coherent point of view and come out arguing.  These people are not fools and it must surely be our dearest wish to find that they are, after all, right. Christopher Booker's book The Real Global Warming Disaster is a formidable piece of writing by any standards.  But what if the sceptics are wrong? What if they have profoundly misunderstood the science? They think, truly and logically enough, that since the amount of carbon produced by human beings is minuscule compared with that being emitted naturally, human activity cannot be the real cause of global warming; and since in past ages changes in climate have been caused by the sun, there is little that we can do to avert them now; and that since carbon emissions have risen during the past ten years but temperatures have not, there is clearly little connection between the two.  You don't have to be an idiot to find these arguments convincing.                                                                                                      

But could they be wrong?  What is alarming about the sceptical  account is that they usually fail to stress the most important point about climate:  the extremely delicate balance of the climate cycle.  It is true that human emissions are tiny compared with those of nature. But nature compensates because virtually all the carbon that is emitted is balanced by forces that absorb it and in turn release oxygen.  These are mainly trees and ocean algae.  To these we have to add a third balancing factor, the polar ice sheets that reflect much of the sun's light back into space.  So miraculously balanced are these forces that just enough carbon is left in the atmosphere to keep the earth warm enough for life.

The fatal somersault. The crucial point to grasp is this. When these balancing forces stop working, not only do they cease to absorb carbon, they turn on their heads completely and start adding to it.  Every tree that catches fire not only ceases to store carbon but suddenly releases all its previously bound carbon into the atmosphere.  Average global temperature becomes that much hotter which makes it more likely that next year more trees will catch fire which makes it more likely still that...Already in 2005 shocking figures for algae death were produced by extremely alarmed scientists.  If enough ocean algae died, and they are doing so at an alarming rate, it could trigger a mass marine extinction that would produce a vast amount of carbon. Melted ice does not simply cease to reflect the sun's rays, it turns into water which absorbs heat and then releases it. It is thought that at present rates of destruction the whole of the Amazon rain forests will have disappeared by 2080, and you must have noticed the greatly increased number of forest fires in the world.  The ice caps are melting at a far faster rate than anyone thought possible.                                                                                                                                                                

The crucial straw. The tiny amount of carbon we are pumping into the atmosphere is not in itself going to result in global warming.  Rather, it is the crucial straw put on one side of an almost exactly balanced pair of scales, that is in itself tiny, but, so finely balanced are the scales,  it could be the factor that brings one side crashing down right to the floor.  There is a more alarming aspect still.  If temperatures became hot enough - and they are not at that level yet but there is good scientific reason to think that unless emissions can be cut drastically they will inevitably  reach this point - billions of tons of carbon currently locked up in arctic tundras will start to melt and release methane.  Methane is twenty-three times more dangerous a greenhouse gas than carbon di-oxide, and once this happened temperatures would start to soar.  The problem is not that we ourselves are going to pump so much carbon into the atmosphere it will produce a blanket so thick that the sun's heat will be trapped and so warm up the earth.  The problem is that we could easily trigger nature itself into doing just that, on a far vaster scale than any we could even dream of in our worst nightmares.  What is alarming is that the climate sceptics never tell you anything of this.  Nor, if the sceptics are wrong, that the possible consequences of inaction are so grave  that to ignore them is surely the very height of the folly that even that shortsighted and improvident animal the human is  prone to commit.                                                                                                                                                                

The problem is so vast that half-hearted measures are a waste of time.  What is required is that one nation does not merely seek to reduce its emissions to reasonable levels, as most are currently trying to do.  Global warming will never be beaten that way.  What we have to do is to go all out to put everything, but absolutely everything, aside to avert climate change.  Somebody has to take a lead.  We have the technology, what we don't have is enthusiam, determination and above all leadership.

Who is right about this?

An appraisal of the arguments. 

First sceptical argument. The scientists are divided on the issue. There are large numbers of them trying to alarm us about global warming because they want to attract grants and funding.

Answer. It is true that the scientists are divided, but only in the sense that 100 can be divided into 75 and 25. The sceptics quote scientists who support them and lists of names sound impressive, but these are always quite a small minority.  Against this, we must put the 2,500 working for the International Panel on Climate Change. This view of things would be vigorosuly combatted by Christopher Booker, of course.  Since most of us are not in a position to count scientists, who are we to believe?  The sceptical scientists have been officially condemned not only by IPCC but by the Royal Society, The American  Academy of Sciences, The Tyndall Centre, The Hadley Centre for Climate Research, The American Geophysical Union and virtually every other official scientific body in the world. The Royal Society rebuts all the major arguments put forward by the sceptics on its website. A common argument is that being fashionably green gets scientists jobs. Of course, academics obviously want to get funding if they can. But what evidence is there that they are deliberately exaggerating the climate issue in order to advantage themselves? ? Are they really at best fools and at worst scoundrels? Are we really to believe that members of the Royal Society, and the climate experts at the Tyndall Centre and the Hadley Centre, are so unprincipled as to regularly and deliberately distort their scientific findings, even it has happened on some occasions,  as, it is alleged, in the University of East Anglia? 

We are in the position of a householder who is visited by ten fire officers, nine of whom tell him that there is a grave danger that he and his wife and children will be burnt to death one night unless he takes steps to fireproof his house, and a tenth who tells him not to bother, because the other nine are only scaremongering so that they can keep their jobs. What kind of a fool is going to believe the tenth and not the nine? 

Second Sceptical Argument.  Climate scientists are basing their predictions on computer models of the future. But the world’s weather is so complex, and there are so many unknowns, computer models are bound to mislead.

Answer. It is true that computer models cannot predict the future with complete accuracy. No-one knows how humanity will respond to the climate crisis, how much economic activity there will be during this century, how quickly the methane deposits in the frozen tundra will melt, all of these and many other unknowns will affect the extent of global warming. Computers can therefore only give a range of possibilities, with different outcomes based on different assumptions that may or may not happen. But this does not mean that they cannot predict the general trend. The major drivers of man-made climate change – the balance of the carbon cycle, the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere, the present rate of increase – are already fully known and it is these that make it certain that future temperatures will rise. The only doubt is as to how great the increases will be, and the computers can tell us with relative certainty what effects different base assumptions will have. They can tell us, for example, that if we continue to increase carbon emissions by 2 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere per year, which is the current rate, average temperatures will rise by at least three degrees above pre-industrial revolution levels, with all the severe consequences that would involve.

The great champion of the computer model is James Hansen; ‘a propaganda barrage from mmgw fanatics, including the pioneer evangelist James Hansen’ as Melanie Phillips sarcastically jeers. Though you do have to be impressed, Melanie, by the number of times Hansen has stuck his neck out on the basis of his computer models, in forecasts that were at the time supported by few of his colleagues, and how often he has been proved right. Few in the late eighties, except him, were forecasting that the effects of global warming would be felt before the end of the twentieth century. Most believed that 2020 was the earliest, but it was he who was right. After the volcanic explosion in Indonesia in January 1992 he predicted, on the basis of his models, that the resulting dust cloud would bring exceptionally cold weather to the western United States and Western Europe six months later. His predictions proved to be remarkably accurate. Most alarming of all, the IPCC which, despite the gaudily deceiving paint in which Phillips and Lawson portray them, is, we have to remember, a highly conservative and cautious scientific body reluctant in the manner of scientists to predict outcomes for which there is not as yet firm evidence, forecast in their fourth report of May 2007 a rate of ice-cap melting that would produce a corresponding rise in sea levels of 28 to 60 centimetres during this century (this is not, incidentally, for the simple reason that melting ice will fill the sea up with more water, the causal chain is far more complex). Hansen predicts a rise of at least a metre and possibly five metres, which would bring severe threat to all the world’s major coastal cities, including London. In 2007 IPCC said ‘late-summer sea ice is projected to disappear almost completely towards the end of the 21st century…in some models’. But in November 2008 The Public Interest Research Centre reports that climate scientists are now predicting the end of late-summer sea ice within three to seven years.  Few climate scientists now doubt, though as Booker points out some do, only a year later that the 2007 IPCC report was far too timid about the melting of sea-ice.  It is proceeding far faster than anybody, except Hansen, predicted. Once again, in the eyes of the majority, Hansen is being proved right. In the light of this record, who is it more sensible to believe, the ‘pioneer evangelist Hansen’ with his support group of ‘mmgw fanatics’ or Melanie Phillips and her small band of scientific sceptics? 

Third Sceptical Argument. Although carbon emissions have increased since 1998 temperatures have not. This shows us that there is no connection between the two. In his book, Nigel Lawson gives us the figures for temperature increase so far in the twenty-first century, based on statistics released by the Hadley Centre and the Climate Research Centre of the University of East Anglia. They are.
 

These figures record increases above the average global temperature during the period 1961-90, and all of them are lower than the 1998 figure which was 0.52°C. Lawson points out, correctly, that these small rises are due to global warming in the twentieth century which has still having an effect, but they show indisputably, again correctly, that no further warming has occurred since the turn of the millennium.

Answer.  Nigel Lawson’s claim was challenged by the Meteorological Office, in a comment on his book published on September 22nd 2008. According to the Met Office an overall upward trend in temperature does not mean that in specific years, or periods of years, there will not be relative falls. The recent period of cooling has been caused by the phenomenon well known to meteorologists of La Nina and El Nino. The exceptionally hot year of 1998 was caused by El Nino, a current that increases the warmth of the water on the ocean surface in large parts of the globe. The opposite phenomenon, La Nina, forces cold water to the surface, with resulting cooler temperatures, and it is factors such as these  that have been pertaining in recent years. If you take these elements out of the equation, 13 of the last 16 years have been the hottest on record. Not to recognize that a rapid overall rise in temperature is taking place is ‘to have your head in the sand’ said the Met Office. Who should we believe, Nigel Lawson who does not even mention these well known complicating phenomena, though Booker does, or the experts, battered, it is true, by the tide of criticism over their forecast of the famous barbecue summer, at the Met Office?

Fourth Sceptical Argument. Even if temperatures do rise by 3 degrees during the 21st century, which is IPCC’s most likely forecast, this only means an average rise of 0.03 per year. We have already sustained an average rise of 0.02 during the twentieth century, and with the improved technologies that we can confidently expect will be developed, there is every reason to think that we will take 0.03 in our stride without any need to modify our industrial way of life.

Answer. It would be hard to exaggerate the fallacy in this argument, put forward by Nigel Lawson on page 27 of his book. It misses to a staggering degree the main point that the scientists are making, showing no understanding whatsoever of the delicate balance of the carbon cycle. To repeat a point made earlier but one so important it is worth repeating, global warming is itself a good thing and if there had been no carbon in the atmosphere the earth would have been too cold to support life. It is true too that the earth naturally produces huge amounts of carbon emissions, compared with which the human contribution is minuscule. Every living thing that dies surrenders its carbon debt. But most of this carbon is soaked up and replaced by oxygen, some through the action of  trees and some by ocean algae. To these, we have to add a third factor that naturally keeps the earth at an even temperature, the reflection of the sun’s rays back into space by the ice-caps. Astonishingly, this balance between carbon emissions and cooling mechanisms has kept the earth at the right temperature for life for many hundreds of thousands of years. Here, however, is the rub. Once these mechanisms fail, not only do they stop cooling the world, they go into reverse and start adding to its heat. Every tree that catches fire not only ceases to store carbon, it releases that already stored into the atmosphere. Dead algae also release carbon, and already in 2005 at the Exeter Conference the shocking revelation was that 30% were even then dead, surrendering their carbon and poisoning the oceans. Once the ice-caps melt, not only do they cease to reflect heat back into the atmosphere, they turn into water which stores it and slowly releases it. This is why the balance of the carbon cycle is so delicate, and why mankind’s relatively tiny contribution is so important.

Once we tip the balance even by a little, positive feedback will start and global warming will begin to cause itself, on a far vaster scale than any we could directly produce, and it will then escape our ability to halt it. The idea that the rise in temperature over the century can be reduced to an average takes no account of this feedback mechanism, which is why it is such a truly major fallacy. The scientists are telling us that we may only have until 2015 to arrest the present annual increase in emissions. If we fail to do that, there will be no way of stopping average temperatures reaching the ‘tipping point’ of two degrees above pre-industrial levels, although, because of delays between cause and effect, that crucial mark would not actually be reached until, probably, about 2030. This two degree tipping point is so significant because it is at two degrees that it is thought positive feedback will begin, and global warming will start to cause itself. At that level the earth will have become hot enough for significant numbers of trees to start catching fire, in the hot summers that there will then be, in the Amazon forests.

As they do so they will release carbon that will make the next year hotter, and that will make the next year hotter still, and so on inexorably, until a point is reached where temperatures will be hot enough to melt the frostbound arctic tundras, and so release the billions of tons of methane locked up in them. Methane is twenty three times more dangerous a greenhouse gas than CO2. Once its effects are added to the feedback process, the rate of temperature increase will start to gallop. Nobody knows whether this will happen, but if it did temperatures could rise this century by anything between three and six degrees. Again nobody knows, and it is this uncertainty that the sceptics have been able to exploit to deadly effect. But what we do know is that it is a very real danger. It could happen. The scientific logic says that to a greater or lesser extent it certainly will, unless we take drastic action to prevent it. This is all very well known science. Is it really sensible not to pay heed to these dire warnings? Why is Nigel Lawson not telling us about it in his book? In assuming that IPCC is saying that temperature will rise by three degrees and working on that assumption, Lawson has completely misunderstood the point that they are making. What they are saying is that temperatures could rise during this century by anything between 1.5 and 6 degrees, depending on a number of unknowns, by far the most important of which is humanity’s response to the climate crisis. Three degrees is only the mean average of these different scenarios. Ironically, if we follow Lawson’s advice and take no serious action to halt climate change, the likelihood grows that we shall not see a mere three degree rise but the release of natural self-promoting mechanisms that will take us closer and closer to six.

Fifth Sceptical Argument. The IPCC’s so-called hockey stick graph shows global temperatures holding absolutely steady until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and then escalating at an ever increasing rate. But this is a false picture. It takes no account, for example, of considerable differences in temperature between the medieval warm period and ’the little ice age’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These were caused by solar activity. There is no difference today.

Answer. The sceptics make too much of the hockey stick graph.  In fact it is largely irrelevant. This is another example of an argument that sounds convincing but is in fact fallacious. It is true that variations in solar heat do cause differences in the earth’s temperature. This is for two reasons. One is that eccentricities in the earth’s orbit sometimes take it closer to the sun, so that it receives more heat, and sometimes farther away so that it receives less. The other is that sunspots, explosive flares on the sun’s surface, sometimes cause the sun to give out more warmth. The passages of the earth round the sun are extremely complex and are known as Milankovich cycles.  There are three principal ones.  The first is the course of the earth round the sun which is not circular but elliptical, and takes 100,000 years to complete. When the earth is at the extremities of this orbit it is, at different times, both farther away and closer to the sun than when it is at the waist.  The second cycle is caused by the tilt of the earth on its axis and takes 42,000 years to complete.  The third takes 22,000 years and arises from the way that the earth wobbles as it travels.  It will be seen that calculating the amount of heat reaching the earth from the sun is extremely complex, far more complex than is usually allowed for by those who take the naive, though factually correct, view that the medieval warm period was caused by the sun.  Because the earth’s orbit follows these mathematical logics, its course in the past can be deduced and plotted against known conditions in the history of the earth. When this is done, the matches between eccentric solar orbits and what is known about both ice ages and inter-glacial warm periods, for example the medieval warm period and the little ice age, fit exactly. We know therefore that plotting the sun’s orbits is a very good indicator of what the earth’s mean temperature at any one period should be. What this tells us about the present day is that the earth’s average temperature should be much lower than it is. There must therefore be some other cause for what we are witnessing. There is none on offer, except man’s own production of greenhouse gas. The correct conclusion to be drawn from the relation between the earth’s orbits round the sun and temperature is exactly the opposite from the naïve one drawn by the sceptics. It shows conclusively that they are wrong.                                                                                                                

The same conclusion follows from the observation of sunspots.  It is known that differences in sunspot activity do affect the earth's temperature.  It is thought, for example, that a dramatic scarcity of sunspots was a major factor in causing the cool, so-called Maunder minimum between 1645 and 1715.  But, on the other hand, studies of tree rings give no indication that sunspots affect the growth of vegetation, so normally speaking sunspots cannot affect temperatures that much.  In any case, the sun's heat warms not the troposphere round the earth but the more distant stratosphere, through the absorption of ultra-violet light by ozone.  Because of the hole in the ozone layer, in recent decades less heat has been absorbed than usual.  There would therefore have to be very pronounced changes in sunspot activity indeed, if it were this that was the main cause of the present global warming.  No such pronounced activity has been observed. If we follow Sherlock Holmes’ advice and eliminate all other possibilities, then the only remaining one must be the true solution, however unlikely it might seem. That one remaining possible explanation, my dear Watson, is human use of fossil fuels.

Sixth Sceptical Argument. Even in the most pessimistic of IPCC’s six scenarios for economic growth during the twenty-first century, it is assumed that poor countries will have advanced to 75% of the standard enjoyed by developed countries today. In the best scenario, even present day poor countries will be three times as well off as the U.S. is today. According to Nigel Lawson, if we factor into these projections a cost caused by global warming of 3% of GDP in the developed world, and even if we raise it as high as 10% in the developing world, it would only mean, at worst, that our great grandchildren in the rich world would be 2.6 times better off in a hundred years time rather than 2.7, and people in poor countries, only 8.5 times as well off as they are today instead of 9.5. In the best of IPCC’s scenarios, the rich would be 4.7 times as well off instead of 4.8, and people in the developing world only be forty-five times as well off as they are today rather than fifty times. What is all the fuss about? (Lawson op.cit. chapter 2)

Answer. You do sometimes wonder whether economists are in any way adjacent to the real world. IPCC’s forecasts are assuming in this case, as are Nigel Lawson’s, that economic growth will continue at its present rate and all other factors will be equal. But they will not be equal. According to Lester Brown ii, at present rates of growth, by 2030 China alone will be consuming two-thirds of the whole world’s current grain harvest, more than double the whole world’s present consumption of paper, will be driving 1.1 billion cars as opposed to the whole world’s present fleet of 800 million, and will be consuming 99 million barrels of oil a day, 15 million barrels more than the whole world’s present daily use. Already by 2003 China was consuming 258 million tons of steel as opposed to the US’s 104 million, in 2005 consumed 67 million tons of meat while the US only ate 38 million, was using nearly twice as much oil as the US, and more cell phones, television sets and refrigerators. Is it really feasible that these crazy rates of growth can be maintained, let alone the much higher rates of growth that Nigel Lawson envisages, over the whole century? Common sense surely tells one that, even if the world can keep up its present rates of growth let alone exceed them, and even if the earth continues to be as fertile in the provision to man of its raw materials as it now is, it cannot sustain this massive and increasing onslaught on its resources. Unfortunately, every indicator tells us that it will not continue to be as abundant in its provision. Before writing his book Six Degrees: Our Future On A Hotter Planet, Mark Lynas claims to have read 7000 scientific papers.iii I doubt if Lawson can match that huge arsenal of authentication. The results of Lynas’s researches are alarming and horrifying to a unique degree. What his researches tell us is:

What the Effects of Global Warming Might Be.

 At two degrees China will be suffering from severe droughts, despite the Chinese Government’s current huge project to divert water from south to north. There will be severe agricultural losses in northern India and northern Australia, but these will be balanced to some extent by increased fertility in western Europe and the northern central United States. By 2040 hot summers will be causing considerable heat stress, and, judging by 2003, hundreds of thousands of Europeans will die. In such years, which will become more and more frequent, harvests in southern Europe will be devastated. Poor countries that have reduced purchasing power on the world markets will have slipped into structural famine, although, by a cruel irony, they will be the ones least responsible for global warming. In the increasingly acidic oceans shell fish will die, because the acids will dissolve their shells, and fish will be struggling to survive. The polar bear will have become extinct.

At three degrees drought will have become permanent in southern Africa, and millions, who even now only just support themselves by growing sorghum and maize, will starve. Even in winter, sea ice at both the poles will be severely reduced, and some scientists – including Hansen inevitably - think that El Nino could become permanent, causing disastrous droughts and floods across the globe. The gulf stream could suddenly switch off, with the ironic consequence that, for some decades, western Europe might experience near-Siberian conditions. At 3 degrees the Amazon rain forests will be doomed, and once the process of self-destruction starts it is thought that they will disappear altogether by 2080. Life in Australia will be increasingly untenable, and hurricanes will be more severe and more frequent. The Indus will dry up, bringing starvation to millions, as will the Colorado. California will be devoured by forest fires. New York will be under threat of flood and Bangladesh mostly under water. Even in areas that are still fertile, grain yields will be severely affected by thermal stress, bringing starvation to many tens of millions of people. Even at three degrees the arctic tundras could start to release their methane

At four degrees much of humanity will be short of water for drinking and irrigation. The Himalayan snow water that irrigates much of the agriculture of Asia will have run dry, and the monsoon rains, on which 2 billion people depend, may have altered irrevocably. Deserts will have spread into Mediterranean Europe, most of southern Africa and the western United States. There will be heat waves of unimagineable ferocity, and even in the UK summer temperatures could reach those of present-day Morroco. Morocco itself will be uninhabitable. Even crops genetically modified to resist heat and drought will not survive the more extreme conditions at this level. A mass extinction will have started that could wipe out half of existing species.

At five degrees all ice on earth would have disappeared, together with all the rainforests. The whole equatorial region would be uninhabitable and those humans left would be seeking to eke out an existence in far northern latitudes. There would be a mass extinction of deep sea life, and, at this level, a real possibility that deposits of methane on the sea beds, called clathrates and holding far more methane that the tundras, would start to melt. The effect of this would be so catastrophic that, if this did happen, the progress from five to six degrees would be almost certain.

At six degrees no-one knows what would happen. The last time the earth’s temperature rose by six degrees was 250 million years ago, and then 95% of all species were wiped out.  It does have to be said that this disaster may have been caused by a meteor hitting the earth, as happened at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago,  rather than by climate change as we now think of it.  But then, for whatever reason, it happened relatively slowly, and some species at least had time to adapt so that they were able to survive even in these extreme conditions. If so great a catastrophe happened this time, it would be extremely quick. Some life probably would survive. But not life as we know it. Would any humans survive? Probably not

We always have to bear in mind the self-confirming multiplier effect that is runaway global warming’s essential dynamic. Once we cross the two degree threshold, we shall have released natural forces that are all too likely to lead on to three degrees. The heat produced by three degrees could of itself produce the conditions that might lead to four degrees. Four degrees is more likely still to lead on to five. And five will almost certainly trigger six.

Should we believe Nigel Lawson with his optimistic prediction of a third world at least forty-five times better off than now, or Lynas, with his 7000 scientific papers foreseeing the searing apocalypses that he describes? Pray God that Lawson is right and Lynas wrong. If only the science were not with Lynas.  But it is.

It is hard to envisage the social effects that the devastating climatic changes that Lynas describes would have. But undoubtedly hundreds of millions would starve, and as many would be homeless. Already, according to a report in The Guardian on November 22nd 2008, rich countries are buying up millions of hectares of land in poor ones in a new form of colonialism that is sometimes surprising, in order to ensure their own future food supplies. A Korean firm has bought up a million hectares in Madagascar, Libya 250,000 in the Ukraine, Arab countries are investing heavily in land in Pakistan and Indonesia, Laos has already signed away 15% of its cultivatable areas to China. We shall see rich countries using military force to defend their food resources, in the very countries where millions of the poor are starving.

Surely it is worth going to any length to ward off this terrifying future world before it is finally too late.

Can Renewables give us the Energy we Need?

Without question yes. It is true that no one form of renewable energy on its own will solve all problems.  But taken together they could do so easily.  It is calculated that offshore windfarms alone could give the UK at least three times the electricity we need.   This is doubtless true in theory, but in practice it is an absurdly misleading claim,  as there is a severe limit to the number of such installations that could be built.  And has anybody calculated their capacity to withstand the immense sea surges that are forecast?  Another problem about wind is that even with conventional power stations it is impossible to produce electricity at a steady level, because of rapid fluctaions in demand.  Because wind blows intermittently this problem becomes greatly exaggerated when the source of power is wind.  A more realistic figure might be that wind could give a third of what we need, albeit at considerable expense because of the need to transport energy from site A where the wind is blowing to site B where it is not, and the additional number of standby power stations that would be needed.  Nevertheless, there are solutions to offshore wind's problems, and their cost is likely to be less than that forecast for rising gas and oil.  The huge fuss that is frequently made about onshore windfarms misses the mark because, on any estimate, the contribution of inshore wind to an overall renewable energy strategy is always going to be very small.  In most places where windfarms are being built it is usually for the wrong reasons, and we might well be better off without them.  However, this is not always the case, and inshore wind does have a contribution to make.  Solar panels are a very successful and cheap technology, and if Britain were re-roofed with them it would make a very significant contribution indeed to our demand for domestic hot water.  All new large buildings could draw some of their energy from geothermal sources, and even a geothermal system installed under an ordinary patio can take the edge off a cold house.  Britain is blessed with abundant wave power, which has not even begun to be exploited.  Even in the U.K. photovoltaic tiles can produce electricity, and with greater demand and appropriate subsidies their price would come down to economic levels. In Africa pv is a different matter.  It is estimated that 10 square km of pv tiles enhanced by mirrors in the Sahara could produce enough electricity for the whole of Europe, and since the invention of long-distance DC cable transporting it is perfectly feasible.  It is only waiting to be exploited.  Another very promising technology is carbon capture, which can be used to strip  carbon from both coal and gas.  Ironically, the biggest contributor to a post-fossil fuel world could be coal.  It says everything about our attitude to global warming that neither governments nor power companies are pressing ahead with carbon capture, but waiting, as at Kingsnorth, for the day when it becomes economically competitive with coal and gas.  That day will come, but certainly not before 2015.   We deserve all the global warming we are going to get.  All this is not even mentioning the cheapest and most effective technology of all, which is better insulation in houses.  Nor is it mentioning nuclear power.  Technically speaking we could certainly do without nuclear power, but from a political point of view that is probably unrealistic.  So some nuclear would almost certainly be part of the mix in a non-fossil fuel economy.                                                                                                                                              

We can certainly make the transition from fossil fuels.  What, then, do we have to do?  We have to pay for it, either through higher taxes or higher energy bills.  And not just higher, very, very much, enormously higher.  The cost of the transfer will be astronomical.  Cheer up though.  We are rich enough to pay for it if we want to.  And it will be cheaper by far than carrying on with oil and gas.   

2.PERSONAL LIFE STYLE IN A TIME OF CLIMATE CHANGE

The old adage that if you want to change the world the right place to start is with yourself is surely true. But in this case it is as well to keep two points in mind. First, this is such a big problem, its solution will never be on a personal but on a public, indeed global scale. Our personal decisions need to be made in this light. Second, there is no area of life in which self-deception operates more effectively than it does here. People allay their guilt and fear about global warming by making small personal changes in their habits of life and then feel that they have done their bit. Re-using plastic bags and changing to long life light bulbs and switching the TV off standby are all good things to do in themselves - effective instruments of self-deception always are - but they are not going to halt climate change. That having been said, in the first and crucial instance it is personal change that counts. It is obviously hypocritical to expect everybody else to change but not to do so yourself. But there are more important reasons. Much of our problem is arising from the huge impersonal social and economic forces that we have unleashed that have escaped from our control. Most of our goods are made in China by people we have never met. Financial movements in the world are now even beyond the control of governments. Advertisers are so skilled they can almost manipulate us into buying whatever product they want. There is apparent choice. in political elections but only between parties who stand for almost the same thing, and that not what the voters really want but what big multinational corporations demand. We need to take charge of our own lives. The world has become extremely impersonal   Before all else we need to reverse this and make the world more personal. We have to aim for personal change in the deepest sense and change our whole relation to the natural world. We have to stop regarding it as something that we use and exploit for as much as we can get out of it, but as something we love and care for and take from it only what we need. Personal change matters because deeds speak louder than words.

Life Style: Domicile

Much the best and most effective way of reducing carbon emissions in your home is insulation. You can change to a green energy company. Re-use and re-cycle. And, of course, switch the TV off standby.

Life Style: Food and Soap

The biggest issue here is meat and dairy consumption. It comes as a surprise to many people to learn that intensively reared cows are a considerably bigger cause of increase in carbon emissions than motor transport. Cows fed on concentrates produce methane which is 23 times as bad a greenhouse gas as CO2 and nitrous oxide in their manure which is nearly 300 times as bad. Supermarkets have squeezed the profit margins of dairy farmers so much, the only ones surviving are forced to maintain large intensively mechanized units. Most of the concentrates on which cattle in these intensive farms are fed are based on soya, much of it imported from Brazil, where an area of rain forest the size of Belgium is being destroyed each year to meet the ever increasing demand. On top of that the farmers are forced to squeeze every last litre out of the unfortunate cows. This is exactly the attitude to nature that we can no longer afford to take.  It is not only cruel and greedy but now terminally stupid. If there is a personal change you can make that really will make a difference it is cutting down on intensively produced meat and dairy products. Better still is to cut them out altogether, but not everybody feels called to be a vegan. Though it might be worth noting two common fallacies about veganism. One is that vegans are undernourished (‘what you need is a good steak inside you’), the other that vegans live on a miserably restricted diet of brown rice and carrots (‘what on earth do you eat?’). In fact the exact opposite is true. If you don’t eat meat you are almost forced to eat more scientifically and make sure that you get the nutrients you need, all of which, with the exception of B12 and Vitamin D for which a vegan needs to take easily available supplements, can be obtained from fruit and vegetables. That is why athletes often become vegans while training for a race, before, to the disgust of real vegans, returning to the steak and chips later. Far from having almost nothing palatable to eat, vegans have most of the great cuisines of the world open to them. On top of that cholesterol and saturated fats from meat and dairy play a big part in inducing strokes and cancers. Provided a vegan is careful, this is the healthiest way to live.

There are other food issues as well. Cook your own food if you possibly can. It’s an important part of taking charge of your own life. A nation that has forgotten how to cook has forgotten how to live, so resist ready meals. Your own food is going to be a lot more nutritious. Buy locally grown food in so far as you can too. The counter argument here is that if we don’t eat green beans from Kenya we are depriving poor people of one of their few sources of income. Unfortunately this is true, but its truth is an index of the irrationality of a world grown so mad it is well on the way to destroying itself. It is surely crazy that food should be grown for rich overfed countries in other poor ones where food, and increasingly the water that is needed to grow it, are already in short supply. The African flower industry, for example, that now, together with Columbia, produces most of the flowers sold in the UK is gradually poisoning Lake Victoria on which it, and most other local life, depends. Inexorably you are drawn into a consideration of the colonial history, and the unfair present world trade system, that has resulted in so many third world nations rich in natural resources but in actuality desperately poor. Flying food round the world is a not unimportant contributor to global warming, and it is additionally crazy that the nations who will suffer most from it are often the very ones where the food is grown. Addressing one’s own consumption of food in relation to climate change inevitably leads you into campaigning for a more just world economic system. The one thing supermarkets respond to is customer pressure. If you do feel you need to buy meat and dairy products and green beans or salad from a supermarket (90 litres of water are needed to grow the salad in one of those cellophane packets) then arm yourself with a stock of letters to the manager and give one each time you go through to the check out person, pointing out the problems involved in the sale of the products you have just bought, and asking them to stock more ethically.

Rain forests are being cut down apace in Indonesia in order to grow palm oil.  Palm oil is in a tenth of all the products on the supermarket shelves, so scrutinize what you buy. This is particularly important in the case of soap. Buy soap from an ethical firm that does not use palm oil.

Life Style: Transport

The two big issues here are cars and planes. MacKay gives us some memorable statistics. Leaving your mobile phone charger on for a whole day is equivalent to driving an average family car for one second. By taking a flight to Cape Town an individual is responsible for as much production of C02 as if he had driven an average sized car fifty kilometers per day for a whole year. Clearly transport is important. Yet the issue is not straightforward. It is in practice virtually impossible for many people to live in the UK without driving a car. Obviously it is desirable to own one with the lowest possible emissions. But all cars, even the Toyota Prius, produce emissions. The answer to the automobile problem is electric cars. But it is more or less impossible to buy one except for the G Wizz, and G Wizzes are neither obtainable nor suitable everywhere. And even if you do own one, how do you recharge it if you want to drive more than forty miles? Occasionally leaving the car at home and taking the bus is not going to halt climate change. A national industry that manufactured and serviced electric cars might. If we want to reduce emissions from cars then we must campaign for a complete overhaul of the automobile industry. This comes under the heading of group action.. Nevertheless, as always, personal address counts. Anybody concerned about climate should drive a car with as low emissions as possible.
 

The question of air transport is even more vexed. Currently aeroplanes only produce 2% of global carbon emissions, which, as Mr O’Leary of Ryanair will tell you, is not very much. But carbon released at stratospheric heights is more damaging than that released at ground level, scientists are not sure whether two or four times as much. So that 2% could be 8. The real problem is the projected future growth of air transport. As a wealthy middle class emerges in India and China they are going to want to fly round their huge countries as well as go on package holidays, and, at present rates of growth, by 2030 the air industry will be emitting at least ten times as much carbon as now. Another reason for the exponential increase in aeroplane use is the exclusion of aviation fuel from tax. Because of the international nature of air travel, most governments are bound by the Chicago Convention of 1944 which forbids its signatories to put tax on air fuel. So should the individual stop flying altogether? Not necessarily. Air travel has become part of the warp and woof of modern life and many jobs cannot be performed without it. The important thing is to fly as little as reasonably possible, in order not to stop air travel but curb its future expansion. An annual flight to Greece for a holiday is not going to make much difference to global warming. But flying every other week to your farmhouse in France is not good. In an age of climate change you don’t need a farmhouse in France. Nor is it necessary for business executives to fly regularly within their own country. They can just as easily take the train. Nor should you feel guilty about an occasional flight to Australia to see your brother. Your not flying to Australia will probably not delay the end of the world by very much. But what will do so is ceasing to be apathetic when you get back from Australia, and putting dealing with climate change right at the top of your personal agenda. The problem is so big that only governments can deal with it. But governments respond to what their electorates want. And in the UK the electorate does not currently want anything significant done about climate. In their hearts they don’t really believe that there is that great a problem. Change your heart. And then do everything you can to change everybody else’s. Campaign for the Chicago Convention to be reformed. The key to solving the problem of aeroplane emissions is raising fares. This is not only because higher fares would reduce aeroplane use. It is also because a great deal of money is needed to find fuels alternative to kerosene. Richard Branson is pouring money into research on ethanol. At the moment only corn ethanol can be produced, which, as even he admits, causes as many problems as it solves because corn used in aeroplanes is corn not eaten by people. But research is proceeding into cellulosic ethanol, produced from tough grasses and agricultural waste. This really could be the answer. But even Branson’s fortune is not big enough to finance this research. When you get back from Australia, campaign to have air fares raised in order to finance research into cellulosic ethanol (you won’t mind too much because, after all, as an environmentally concerned person you only fly occasionally).

3.JOINING OR STARTING AN ACTION GROUP

There is a national network of climate action groups called The Campaign Against Climate Change. You can look it up on the internet and find out whether there is a group in your local area.  What we have to keep before our minds is this. The scientists are telling us that there are two crucial dates. If we want to halt climate change we have to stem the increase in emissions by 2015 and reduce overall emissions to 20% of present output by 2050. The politicians are ignoring the first completely and gratefully accepting the second, because 2050 sounds reassuringly far in the future, and they can claim to be listening to the scientists and following their advice while putting off decisive action. In practice neither of these targets has any chance of being met on current trends. The time for action is now, for if we fail to halt emission increase by 2015, or certainly by 2020, the problem may by 2050 have escaped beyond our control in any case. There is, however, another reason why we need to act urgently and decisively now. We cannot blame governments because governments are elected by us. It is the public who must bear the blame and the public is apathetic about climate. Either they have been so confused by Melanie Phillips and Christopher Booker that they are not at all sure that there is a serious problem in any case, or they do see that there is, but despair in the knowledge that anything we do in the UK will be undone almost immediately by increased emissions in India and China (where, as everybody knows, two new coal fired power stations are being opened every week).                                                                                                                                  

How can we solve this problem? If one country were to go all out to free itself from fossil fuels more or less completely as soon as possible – with a really huge effort it could be done within ten years - other countries would follow. India and China know that they are likely to suffer from climate change even more than we are, but, just as ours are, their hearts are gripped and clouded by consumption and apathy. It is this freeing of the heart that matters. We need to change our attitudes, not cut down on carbon emissions as little as we can and as late as we can in order to grudgingly preserve our present way of life as long as we can, but see that there is an exciting, new, much better, much kinder and more humane age in prospect, which we need to embrace with welcoming enthusiasm as soon as we can. Incidentally, once we had made the huge effort and the huge investment, it would be a more prosperous age too.  Above all we need to change our hearts, and we need to do it now. But such an essential fundamental change also needs to issue in practical action.

How can the UK be made carbon free? Two areas are essential. One is automobiles. Even hybrids still emit carbon and hydrogen cars are years in the future, if ever, not because they are technologocally unfeasible - they are already in existence - but because there are no filling stations.  For the immediate foreseeable future the answer to the automobile problem is the electric car, because the servicing is relatively simple.  We need a UK industry which is making electric cars and adapting forecourts to service them.  We need to campaign for this and invest in it. The other thing we need to do is to re-energize the electric grid.   MacKay’s plan 6 or Plan M as he calls (look it up in his 10 page short version of his book on his website) is perhaps the best, and entirely feasible. It calls for a mix of different strategies, all of which could be started now.  But to do this the public has to want it. It is that deep wanting, first in our own hearts, and then in everybody else’s, that we have to work to bring about. But having wanted it we also have to invest in it.

4.INVESTING IN ENVIRONMENTAL PROJECTS

If we are to re-energize Britain where is the investment to come from? Not from the Government, they have already spent hundreds of billions bailing out banks. Not from energy companies. Profits from rising oil and gas prices are too high to make it likely that they will want to cut their own throats. Nor from the commercial sector. The era of cheap credit is over. It can only come from us, the public.  If you really want to help defeat climate change, then invest your money in renewable energy projects. You can either do this directly. Or, what is most practical for most people, through a bank that will use the money in the way you want it. In the UK this means either through the Co-operative or Triodos Bank. We crucially need investment in electric cars and in re-energizing the national grid.

5.A PERIOD OF QUIET WITHDRAWAL EACH DAY

Meditation is not necessarily anything to do with religion. It is to do with being human. This is because, unlike the other animals to whom we are so closely related in evolutionary terms, we have rich and complex inner selves. Like other animals we have powerful appetites that we have inherited from them.  But whereas the other animals are driven entirely by their appetites, in our case appetites are absorbed in and subordinate to an inner self. But this inner self easily loses control and we become driven by appetites just as much as our fellow creatures. This is why, if we want to regain control of our own lives, reaching into and cultivating the inner self is so important. This is especially true today, when outer distractions have become so numerous and our appetites are artificially whipped up so much. Above all things we have to transform ourselves from consumers into contemplatives, from consuming as much of the world’s resources as we can to consuming as little, and to do that we need to take charge of ourselves. Meditation is a way of doing that.

Western liberal society’s biggest problem is self-delusion. People regard themselves as animal lovers but also want cheap meat from supermarkets. They want a tip top health service but do not want the taxes to pay for it. They want to prevent terrorist atrocities but don’t like to feel that torture is being used to extract the information that will forestall the atrocities. They regard themselves as lovers of liberty, but do want to buy clothes that are only so cheap because they are produced by people working for wages not far removed from a condition of slavery. Above all, this self-deception applies to climate. People feel vaguely alarmed and uncomfortable but do not want to take the steps necessary to effectively allay the fear. They therefore re-use plastic bags and change to long-life light bulbs, and become ‘environmentally aware’ or ‘go green’. We are a society living in a state of what psychologists call cognitive dissonance. The pre-requisite of effective action on climate is to approach the problem with an undivided mind and heart.  We need to take charge of ourselves.

This is why a short period of reflection every day is so desirable. Twenty minutes is a suggested period. Simple quiet reflection is of great value, though it is important that you don’t spend the time worrying about your problems. The whole point of meditation is gathering yourself together so that you are not defined by your problems but integrated into yourself. This is easier said than done. This is why it is of great use to follow well-defined meditational practices designed to increase self-possession, induce calmness of mind and achieve happiness. An excellent introduction to such techniques and practices is Meditation Week By Week by David Fontana, which gives you a 52-week programme of simple spiritual; exercises. Beyond that, all the contemplative traditions seek to reach beyond images in the mind to an imageless mental state that the Buddhists call no-mind. The evidence is so overwhelming that it is possible to reach such a state, which in turn can lead onto a kind of transcendental joy that the Buddhists call enlightenment, the Hindus ananda or pure bliss, and the Christians union with God, we would be foolish to assume that such claims are all nonsense or definitely not for us.  To repeat, you don’t have to be religious to meditate. It is something that belongs to the human condition. All that is necessary is a willingness to let it transform your life. This is why I think it is so important in the climate context.  What we need is a change of heart and meditation is of its nature transformative.  It offers us other goods than material ones, and in a world in which material ones are going to be in increasingly short supply, looking for alternatives is perhaps a good idea.

We can do this.  But we have to do it with an enthusiatic heart and we have to do it now.  

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for Six Months in the Inner Life: A Personal Diary in a Time of Climate Change, go to www.thomj.co.uk