Summer of discontent?

George Osborne is playing with political fire. The Budget will be tough this week, but will the country be able to stomach the medicine.

It's all horribly cyclical: history repeats itself as tragedy and then as farce.


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Solent sympathy

When does criticism of a business leader go too far? When the mob sense blood but go for the wrong target.

Tony Hayward, BP CEO, was photographed on his yacht at Cowes on the Isle of Wight taking part in the Round the Island race with his sons.

Yes, he was taking time off. Yes, he was enjoying himself. But surely he'll be all the more refreshed for taking time out before going back to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

And, anyway, Mr Hayward has delegated day-to-day responsibility for the disaster to an American called Robert Dudley, so maybe the US public may react differently to having a fellow countryman in charge of sorting out the mess.


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Drill, BP drill?

President Obama has a problem, now, getting his climate reforms through the Senate with the BP oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

But this pales into insignificance alongside the travails of the Republican party on this issue.

Whither Sarah Palin? Should baby still be drilling? She has been more muted since the crisis began, apart from tweeting her condolences to the families of the dead oil workers.

Hmm. I suppose much rests how how much the American people will take when it comes to increased gasoline prices. Voters can have short memories, when environmental catastrophe comes up against people's personal budgets.


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Those petrol emotions

A rubicon has been crossed. As of today, a full tank of petrol costs over £100.

Where climate change scientists argue the toss about 'peak oil', the power of the wallet may yet force people into considering public transport and hire cars for local trips.

Petrol will get ever more expensive, and alternative fuels will soon seem very attractive.


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Spring has sprung, eventually

Late springs after long winters have winners and losers. Snowdrops and bats are among the winners; deer and bumble bees among the losers.

Will this make any difference to the energy and balance of new life? Not in the long term: although scientists will keep a look out for long-term climate trends.


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Television's footprint

Apart from presenting current high-profile television series, what do Profession Brian Cox [Wonders of the Solar System], David Dimbleby [The Seven Ages of Britain] and Simon Reeve [The Tropic of Cancer] have in common.

Clocking up thousands of air-miles to leave massive carbon footprints, although Mr Dimbleby has travelled less far than the others. Professor Cox, in particular, seems to present moments from exotic locations all over the globe.

What is the solution? No one wants a return to the studio-based Open University programmes of the 1970s, with archetypal boffins in brown cardigans using flashcards and blackboard pointers on shaky sets.

On the other hand, landmark series do benefit from presents getting up close and personal with different Earth environments and artefacts in situ to make their points. And campaigning to prevent one person and their television crew from flying around the place won't independently prevent specific aeroplanes from taking off.

Perhaps landmark series that get sold abroad prevent national television networks from sending their own presenters to make similar programmes, which reduces the overall negative effect on the environment.

One useful advance might be to publish the carbon footprint figure for each episode during the closing credits for each show, backed up with explanations on websites as to how production teams and presenters travelled around during recces and film shoots. An appropriate number of trees could than be planted to offset the damage.


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Ava-heart, Mr Cameron?

James Cameron suddenly has an opportunity to put his money where his mouthpiece is.

Avatar has made oodles of dough (well over $2 billion and counting) from the premise that bad guys want to mine the resources under the habitat of an indigenous species.

Survival International has made a ten-minute film (narrated by ace-campaigner, Joanna Lumley) highlighting the plight of the Dongria Kondh tribe in Orissa, India, whose sacred mountain is rich in bauxite ore that mining company Vedanta Resources wants to get its mitts on. This film is a public response to Mr Cameron's epic, inviting him to join the cause and pledge his money.

This is an interesting dilemma. Does James Cameron risk on the one hand being seen as a hypocrite if he doesn't cough up a contribution, or on the other hand risk inviting every Tom, Dick and Harry charity to show up cap in hand on his next film set.

The solution? He's got to sign a cheque, to make sure his movie is not devalued as a cheapshot way to exploit environmental concerns. Having made the biggest grossing film of all time, he is going to get the begging-bowl letters anyway.

The rise of the NITBY: Not In Thy Back Yard

Reigate farmer, Robert Fidler, is going to have to knock down his fortress and his mock-tudor house, built without planning permission on his green-belt farm.

A case of an Englishman's castle no longer being his home.

But think of the chaos that would result without urban planning laws. There would be no green space left for all the extensions, vanity mansions and second holiday homes. A cross between Los Angeles, Manhattan and Las Vegas, perhaps?

Not-so-super injunctions

The press bites back on privacy cases. The so-called superinjunction Chelsea football star John Terry's lawyers, Schillings, obtained to try to protect his sponsorship image from the reality of his private life has been breached.

Superinjunctions were devised to prevent the media from even mentioning that an injunction had been imposed on a story about to be published in the press. Trafigura tried this tactic through their lawyers Carter Ruck with the Guardian to suppress a story about toxic waste dumping in the Ivory Coast, which was only foiled by Paul Farrelly MP raising a question in the House of Commons knowing he would be free from prosecution.

These are two cases where the surperinjunction legal tactic has fallen apart. But who's to say if there are unexploded cases where stories continue to be suppressed using this 'privacy by the back door' approach? No doubt, the UK press itself will be investigating just such a scenario even now.

Wrapping up Christmas

Most of Britain will have exchanged presents today wrapped with as much gusto as the Christo team. Our family made a small dent in our personal carbon footprint by not using paper to conceal gifts, just putting them in reusable plastic bags.

This got me thinking just how much paper got used at Christmas 2009 in the UK. One supplier in Kent has had an 18 per cent increase in orders for wrapping paper, making a total of 35 million metres (enough to cover 9/10ths of planet Earth) and their Christmas cracker orders are up 21 per cent to 26.6 million (to say nothing of the paper hats and awful puns). The Royal Mail estimate that 700 million Christmas cards will be sent via the delivery service this year, and the paper usage includes envelope and card for each item. If an average card and envelope uses, say, 0.5 metres then that's 350 million metres. Maths has never been my strong point, but that's an awful lot of paper.

So, Christmas 2009 in the UK is like Christo wrapping the world several times over, and that's just from one country. Maybe the dominant green campaign needs to stop people wrapping presents (at least with printed papers) as an awful lot of trees must be being sacrificed for the annual splurge, rather than simply using recycled paper to prepare gifts for family and friends.

The quiet lady sings: what now after Copenhagen?

How is the Copenhagen climate change conference to be rescued for posterity? Maybe the politicians will be embarrassed by world public opinion, but more likely not -- as voters will continue to be more focused on relatively short-term issues, like salary levels, taxes and employment.

Jimmy Carter, the former US President, wrote yesterday about the Quartet (US, EU, Russia and the UN) being reformed to consider the plight of the Palestinians and their quest for a homeland. The Quartet, he argued, might have more clout than single nations in forging a solution to negotiations that have been going on for decades. He praised Baroness Catherine Ashton, the new EU foreign affairs chief, for flying this kite: a 'quiet lady' who just might know what she's doing?

Perhaps the Quartet, or some similar grouping, might also consider climate change on their agenda, if the 193 countries present at Copenhagen is too large a number to manage? When crisis strikes globally, perhaps global bodies need to take action on behalf of the world? And the UN should come into its own, as long as the people at the top are strong enough.

So long and thanks for all the species

Transition town, Copenhagen? Are you having a laugh? More like transition hamlet, Copenhagen, when it should have been transition global village.

So, in another reference to Douglas Adams, it's last chance to see fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, the whole planetary caboodle.

World heritage sights

Egypt wants the Rosetta stone back. Nigeria wants the Benin bronzes. Greece wants the Elgin marbles. And Scotland's SNP wants the return of the Lewis chessmen. The common denominator? The originals are in the British Museum, acquired or purloined from centuries of Empire, conquest and political manoeuvring. Finders keepers, losers weepers.

Advocates of the restitution of treasures to their country of origin mention national pride, historical injustice, and contextual meaning provided by place. Promoters of the status quo talk about the difficulty of the logistics of moving ancient objects, the threat of fragmentation of the world's great collections, and the resulting loss to academia.

So who's right? The distribution of artefacts is an early kind of globalisation. If globalisation is the movement of people to seek available work and resources, then countries biggest assets are their populations. Why not decide on the best locations for international treasures based on their safety for future generations where most people can see them? If terrorist attack is a tangible threat (e.g. the Afghan buddhas), then artefacts should not be returned? If global warming threatens the lie of the land (e.g. South Pacific treasures) then the goodies should be looked after elsewhere. In an era of carbon footprint awareness, perhaps the greatest treasures should be the things to travel rather than the people? And custodianship should be in the gift of a global body, say UNESCO, rather than any national government, but experts from each relevant country would play key advisory roles in preserving artefacts for future generations.

Let's put the boot on the other foot. How would the British like it if Stonehenge was relocated to California? How would the Americans cope if the Liberty bell was the star attraction at the Louvre in Paris? How would the Chinese feel about the Terracotta army being rehoused in Russia? It doesn't make sense, yet that's what has happened in similar cases throughout the ages, with only the passage of time taking off the edge off the absurdity.

Tourism has to be balanced with natural justice. Wouldn't it be great if world collections that may lose control of work that wasn't theirs to keep encouraged the development of their own indigenous culture, invited guest, itinerant exhibitions from other countries to fill the gap, and displayed magnificent copies of treasures to satisfy the memory of historical displacement (e.g. the Roman antiquity copies at the Victoria and Albert museum in London)?

Cockermouth-under-Derwent

Britain is submerged by the deluge yet again. I don't remember storms like this in the old days. Rivers might have burst their banks, but I don't recall the mayhem and relocation of people that seems to have been epidemic over the last few years, ever since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister, and Cockermouth is the latest example.

Still, despite the havoc, just think how lucky East Anglia has been so far with its flat plains and boggy heritage. How many inches would it take to revert Norfolk to swamp and Ely to an island? And how much money will it take to make sea defences high enough to keep the North Sea, er, in the sea?

What the betting that climate change predictions won't turn the land into the alternative England of His Dark Materials rather than keeping the traditional fens of Waterland?