It’s an exceptionally inconvenient truth. Only one American in three believes that human beings are responsible for climate change: a polling result 10% down on where opinion rested the year before.  Worse, the number of Americans who believe that climate change is a hoax or a scientific conspiracy – not doubting,   just damned blank certain – has doubled since 2008.  Add in those who assert that the changes, if any, are of “no significant concern”, and you’ve got 30% of the US denying, scoffing and just walking on by.  Are the issues clearer, the people more committed, here on this side of the Atlantic?  Call for the latest evidence from Ipsos Mori – and find that the proportion of  UK adults who believe that global warming is “definitely” a reality has plummeted from 44% to 31% in the last 12 months.  And although no study of this nature has been completed in Ireland (to my knowlege), figures like these, on both sides of the Atlantic, are getting more sceptical week by week.   The real change of electoral climate is that fewer and fewer voters pay any heed to scientists and politicians.   It isn’t hard to collate the factors that drive disillusion.  Professors with a colloquial touch writing “awful” emails; a recession so tough that it blows future shock away; a cold, cold winter the Met Office didn’t forecast; scientific angst about swine flu revealed as way over the top; dodgy figures, dodgy reporting, dodgy issues way up to UN level.  These are only a few of our least favourite things. Mix them together in the stew of pre-election politics, and the result is lethal inertia.

Environmental issues have slithered down the greasy pole of public anxiety.  They won’t get much of a mention on the imminent reshuffle: no fresh commitments, no crucial pledges.  In one sense, the heat may by rising; in another, the heat is off.  And that, of course, is cause for very significant concern.  Democracies move in particular ways. Voters have to clamber on board when sacrifices are required.  They have to see the need for pain, to sense the danger of doing nothing.  They have to lead their leaders as well as follow – once they switch off, nothing good happens easily, if at all.  An Obama stalled on healthcare reform in the Senate isn’t going to be able to deliver sweeping global warming policies.   He may not be George Bush, but he already seems to know when he’s on a loser. And, without him, you can write the Chinese or Indian scripts. You can tell that the follow-ups to Copenhagen will be feebler, not stronger: true cause for despair. Kick away any mass impetus for tackling climate change as schedules of imminent necessity fade and review panels plod across the wastelands of borrowed time.  What’s to be done (except wait for a natural disaster that ends all argument – and much else besides)?  First, through gritted teeth, say what won’t work, what’s been tried already and failed.  More jaw and Gore from politicians can’t cut it. T hey have come to seem secondhand sources, merely parroting a frail scientific thesis.  That goes, alas, for journalists, too – and for pressure groups issuing lurid warnings or staging angry demos.  Those of us who are convinced, who believe in the necessity of action, haven’t changed our minds. But we’re not the point.  The audience that matters is out there, sleeping or drifting. And rousing it will demand something different, not more of the same. Yet more of the same is exactly what we seem to be getting. More re-examinations of existing evidence, monitored by the people who failed to monitor it last time.  More supposedly transparent attempts to say precisely when Himalayan glaciers will melt. More United Nations panels, flying lugubriously hither and yon in the cause of consensus. More declarations signed by hundreds of scientists on behalf of a notional “scientific community” (rather like letters to editors from umpteen economists urging cuts or no cuts).  None of it has a ring of renewed confidence. And the plain fact is that we surely need a prophet, not yet another committee.  We need one passionate, persuasive scientist who can connect and convince – not because he preaches apocalypse in gory detail, but in simple, overwhelming terms.  We need to be taught to believe by a true believer in a world where belief is the fatal, missing ingredient.

via: guardian.co.uk

Article written by Peter Preston

In an earlier post  I was mentioned  that traditionally springtime has budding gardeners across Ireland itching to get back into their flowerbeds and rockeries after a long winter break.  Doctors have warned that many gardeners overdo it and end up needing treatment for a host of injuries including gardeners’ back, weeder’s wrist and pruner’s neck, (yes, there is such a thing). It’s not just gardeners that need to relax and take it easy…we all do. 

I got hold of an acupressure Mat a few weeks ago to see if it helped my back…It did.  This might be becuase it’s based on the ‘Bed of Nails’ principle or might be the fact that I now take time out to relax and do nothing for nearly an hour a day.  Whatever the reasons I find myself in a better frame of mind…….and it’s an all natural alternative therapy. I like it much so that I have decided to sell them myself.

To get the new website  going I am offering a FREE mat to the lucky winner of the Free Prize Draw on the homepage of the  shakti.ie   website.  Please feel free to enter and good luck………..The closing date is the end of March 10

Cheers

Ian

“How about Lily” my lad says, having fun trying thinking of a name for the stray dog that has landed on our doorstep. “I like Amaratsu,” the other one chirps. It’s been three days since the scruffy Springer Spaniel wiped its muddy coat all over the glass on the front door, and she’s not got any cleaner since. I tried to shoo it off, like most caring people do, but it just cowered and slid itself across the lawn on all fours. It’s been doing the same over the rug in the front room ever since, leaving a trail of mud behind it. I don’t know how, but it just manages to be wet and dirty all of the time, and so does the house since it arrived. (more…)

WHEN it comes to adopting green parenting practices, being environmentally aware is not the same thing as being environmentally friendly, says green parent and ‘ mumpreneur’ Claire Lancaster, founder of Dandelion Lounge, a personalised stationery service with a focus on families.

” If you asked my mum raising a family in the Seventies if she was ‘environmentally friendly’ she wouldn’t have been able to answer the question, simply because the term would have meant nothing to her,” says Lancaster.

But in the Seventies, her mother opted for reusable terry-towelling nappies, walked everywhere, purchased from a local farm and greengrocers and didn’t go abroad for holidays. (more…)

Money and the garden

We have made a decision to only grow a limited amount of vegetable types this year.  For years now we have perused the gardening seed catalogues with the feeling that we need to get a vegetable from every letter of the alphabet.  Asparagus, artichoke, banana (yes, we’ve tried growing them,) carrots, dill….well you know how it goes after years of watching Sesame Street. The outcome was that when the plants grew, there wasn’t enough room for them to grow healthily. Never mind keeping up with crop rotation -it became a matter for the code breakers. (more…)

This week, I start to investigate the tangled mess of rotting leaves; brown stalks and overrun green stuff that was last year’s vegetable garden. I am very much an early season gardener when it comes to the veggies. I love all the preparation. Clearing away the old dead matter, pulling out as many roots as I can, removing stones, sowing, planting and weeding. However, after I have harvested the last of the string beans and before the purple sprouting broccoli comes into its own, I tend to forget about the vegetable patch, concentrating more on general maintenance, hedge clipping, the last grass cut and clearing leaves off the drive. (more…)

We know the greenest option for a business card: scratch the info off a card already handed to you, replace it with your own, and recirculate it.  Nothing greener than reuse!   But…it isn’t exactly professional looking. Could a POKEN also be a green solution? It ditches paper and shares social network information digitally just by “high fouring” someone who also has a POKEN.  Everything from email to Twitter and Facebook information can be transferred with a touch. (more…)

As the economy gradually recovers from the past year’s big slump, changes are expected in consumer behavior: according to a recent survey, in 2010 UK and American shoppers are to pay much more attention to transparency and ethical responsibility in their food and beverage purchases.

A survey by market research organization Mintel reveals that, despite a widespread growing confidence and adaptation to overcome the previous restraints, consumers will be adapting to the new economy, moving away from excessive spending toward moderation and higher attention to ethical sourcing and sustainability. (more…)

What do people from Mexico City, Norway, Central Slovakia, Northern China, and South Australia all now have in common with the British? It is talking about the weather. One time the weather was a subject that I only really heard the British and Irish talk about. We would be famous for going on about it, sometimes in minute detail, perhaps that was how we partly overcame our reserve. Nowadays everyone is talking about the weather. (more…)

What is a luxury? Usually it is something that people want, without any (or much) significant reason for wanting it, except that it is rare. But things that are rare at one point in time can be commonplace at other times. Take chicken.

Fifty five years ago chicken was a luxury. In every restaurant it was the most expensive item on the menu and even reasonably well off people in England would be lucky if they ate chicken once an month. Chicken it seems was tasty and such a treat. It was more expensive than beef. (more…)