Act On

Watching Joan Ruddock on the telly the other morning made me realise how far things have come, and how far they have yet to go. Smack bang in the middle of Corrie is an ad featuring (I think) Nigel from Eastenders about the crimes of carbon production. "Does it have a happy ending?" the nauseatingly cute girl asks Nige. Well I doubt it my dear, but let's wait and see. I have dutifully searched online for Act On CO2 and have become enormously embiggened by the whole cromulent process.

Joan is of course relatively close to my heart, along with Ed, and the other cronies who have made such sterling efforts to contribute to carbon reduction measures over the past year. Also close to my heart has been the Climate Camp, embroiled as I was in the protests at Whitehall Place a month or so ago. I was - to all intents and purposes - on the wrong side of the fence, facing the crusties as they sat in their canoes and chanted their slogans, while I fretted about the creature comforts of the SCS and the contract lead. I am following them on Twitter - even to mobile device level - but this is largely so that I can prepare to defend against, rather than mobilising the tent and the Special Brew so that I can join in another swoop. What can I say? I am a whore, like the rest of them. That includes you, by the way.

If we talk about sustainability (for what else is there when asking about climate change?) then we must take a holistic view. We have all (now, I guess anyways) seen the plantations of palm trees replacing the indigenous flora, partly to satisfy our insatiable need for recycled packaging, but mostly to feed our even more vampiric desire to defy the natural processes of life - i.e., ageing. If we can't accept the fact that we as humans are not sustainable, but that life itself must ultimately be so, then we are in big trouble.

The malaise spreads far and wide. Countless millions of tiny plastic bottles, made from a myriad of different oil-derived materials, line our shelves. Waitrose remove the word 'REDUCE' from the sustainable triangle, and even a hint of a drop in production levels causes unprecedented global panic in the 'money markets'.



Wherein, needless to say, lies the rub. While Cameron and Brown fall over themselves (actually, Brown probably falls over himself more - slap me!) to crow about their cuts, pay rates at executive level continue to be 'sky rockets in flight'. None of us can swallow that.