Living our Lukewarmness

The Guardian's attitude to climate change has undergone an encouraging evolution. There was a time when heatwaves that killed people in their thousands were good for little more than a few hundred words of plodding whimsy about Anglo-Saxon attitudes to the weather. "Judging by the comatose and in some quarters almost hostile reaction to the heatwave," we were told, "Britain has a long way to go before centuries of phlegm and caution are discarded for the fervour and excitement of permanently warmer climes." So your granny's collapsed from heat exhaustion? Well, mustn't grumble - get your manly fervour out onto that cricket pitch!

A few months later, it seemed as if the bad news had penetrated even Alan Rusbridger's air-conditioned office. A report by a respectable international team of scientists predicted extinction for a quarter of terrestrial species, plant and animal alike, by the year 2050. The solution was clear: "if every driver took one fewer car journey a week averaging nine miles, it would cut carbon dioxide emissions from traffic by 13%." Other recommended "minimum efforts" for the cautious and phlegmatic included "having a shower rather than a bath, putting a 'hog' in the lavatory cistern, recycling household rubbish, disposing of household chemicals carefully, encouraging wildlife in the garden and composting vegetable cuttings." Americans too were not exempt from moral instruction: they could help "by driving less powerful cars or turning down the air conditioning". Meanwhile, it was suggested, Tony Blair might take advantage of his intimate relationship with George W Bush's back pocket and push a copy of the scientists' report into it. No doubt Bush would have found it much more entertaining than all those tedious Exxon men by whom he is normally surrounded.

Now that Tony Blair has decided that climate change and Africa are the very things to keep the headlines away from distasteful issues like war and privatisation, the Guardian provides us with a further riveting instalment. "Summer heat and sudden floods are a reminder that even the British climate has its extremes;" well gosh, can't argue with that. Nevertheless, if the consensus on global warming proves to be correct, phlegm and caution will prevail in the end: "heatwaves, storms, droughts and flooding will cease to be a surprise."

Furthermore, in a convenient tying-up of Tony Blair's two major compassionate concerns, "it is the developing world, and particularly Africa, that will take the brunt of the impending climatic disaster." However, in typically selfish and backsliding fashion, the British public is unwilling to take responsibility for the cars and airlines whose advertisements pay Alan Rusbridger's salary: there is "clear opposition (61%) to an environmental tax on air travel and scepticism too about road pricing" and "a lingering sense that voters see climate change as someone else's problem". There are still too many unregenerate cisterns out there. Work on it, people.

There follows an optimistic paragraph on the fact that, according to the latest Guardian/ICM poll, a large majority of the British public want the Government to "take a lead" on the matter, and also to confront the chimp about the problem. This is a sign that, despite our inveterate stupidity and the astounding dearth of front-page news about the issue, "the threat of global warming is at last hitting home" to the stolid British public. So far as I have seen, the Guardian does not raise the question of whether Tony Blair is more likely to take note of British public opinion or of the people who pull Bush's strings; perhaps it was too obvious to mention.