What will it take.....

..to make both the developed world, and growing economies like India & China, take climate change seriously??

Will the horrific effects of Hurricane Katerina make the US look at it's own environmental attitudes with a new perspective?

Will growing economies, at last enjoying the financial rewards that the US and EU has always enjoyed, be happy to shut down their flourishing industries and economies just to 'save the world'?

Is our greed now killing us off, and can we reverse the trend?

fandango wrote: no...we can't reverse the trend, Andy.  China and India have a joint population of over 2 billion people and are burning fossil fuels as freely as we did in the first part of the last century...I can't help feeling that the future is VERY GRIM INDEED, and I'd rather not think about it...

It's terrible that todays children, and their children will have to deal with our sh!t

I'm kinda glad I dont have any.

fandango wrote: Blacksword wrote: fandango wrote: no...we can't reverse the trend, Andy.  China and India have a joint population of over 2 billion people and are burning fossil fuels as freely as we did in the first part of the last century...I can't help feeling that the future is VERY GRIM INDEED, and I'd rather not think about it... It's terrible that todays children, and their children will have to deal with our sh!t I'm kinda glad I dont have any. Andy, every time you write a paragraph...anyway.  I agree wholeheartedly.  I can't look at a little kid these days without getting depressed about what the world is going to be like when they are my age, let alone my dad's....it's one of the primary reasons I don't have a kid...I just couldn't bare the thought of bringing them into a world like this.  Too much radio 4 I think, I'd better turn over to Chris Moyles ()...

Radio 4, hey? Me too..

Do you find the shipping forecasts as therapuetic as I do ??

Please dont pick on me about my spelling of therapueutic!  I'm sure it's wrong I cant be @rsed to check! I'm going to listen to some Rennnassaincance

Blacksword wrote: fandango wrote: Blacksword wrote: fandango wrote: Blacksword wrote: fandango wrote: no...we can't reverse the trend, Andy.  China and India have a joint population of over 2 billion people and are burning fossil fuels as freely as we did in the first part of the last century...I can't help feeling that the future is VERY GRIM INDEED, and I'd rather not think about it... It's terrible that todays children, and their children will have to deal with our sh!t I'm kinda glad I dont have any. Andy, every time you write a paragraph...anyway.  I agree wholeheartedly.  I can't look at a little kid these days without getting depressed about what the world is going to be like when they are my age, let alone my dad's....it's one of the primary reasons I don't have a kid...I just couldn't bare the thought of bringing them into a world like this.  Too much radio 4 I think, I'd better turn over to Chris Moyles ()... Radio 4, hey? Me too.. Do you find the shipping forecasts as therapuetic as I do ?? Please dont pick on me about my spelling of therapueutic!  I'm sure it's wrong I cant be @rsed to check! I'm going to listen to some Rennnassaincance I'll buy you a dictionary for Xmas!  there is something about the shipping forecasts which are from another age...just like most Radio 4.  I still miss Alistair Cooke's letter from America, as it was the only way I could understand what went on in that nation of theirs!! Yeah, and 'Home truths' aint the same since John Peel died! If you want to know whats happening in the US tune in to Fox News - ok, so it may not be that accurate but it's bloody funny!

That accurate??? It's only one step removed from Mugabe filling the grocery store shelves with food, a week before the elections, or the documentaries by the Stazi from the East German Ministry of Information.....

The Shipping forecast hasn't been the same since they renamed Finisterre.

Tom Robinson did a pretty good job as guest presenter of Home Truths, but there's no replacing Peely.

At least we still get the occasional round of Mornington Crescent (and news of Samantha's exploits - is she the sexiest woman in UK media or what?).

Radio 4 trivia aside, the issue of India and China industrialising is a tricky one - on the one hand the damage to an already destabilised environment could be catastrophic (and however you slice it humankind's activities have had a profound effect on the environment; if we all went totally green tomorrow it would still take decades for the harmful effects to start wearing off), but on the other hand it seems unfair, having benefited from industrialisation ourselves, to deny those benefits to some of the world's poorest people. Ideally, we should be trying to help them avoid some of our worse mistakes, but the relentless greed for cheap goods in hypermarkets makes that an extremely unlikely scenario.