Decombustion

I’ve been looking at Dawn Foster’s brilliant blogs, including the excellent A Hundred and One Wankers in which she chronicles, with the help of a Google map, the precise abuse which she receives as she cycles around London.  Or did, until the ‘greatest wanker of them all’ pinched her bike outside the Beckton Asda. ( I remember the Asda when we lived there twenty-five years ago, before Beckton had an infrastructure and we walked down to Custom House to go to Mass and get the train to work.)

Anyway,  though I don’t get as much specifically sexist abuse as Dawn (probably because I look like the abusers’ mums), M and I both get our share of close shaves and moronic motorists.  On Sunday afternoon, as I was cycling to The Graan, a young boy racer overtook me, threw a glass bottle out of his window (fortunately he didn’t have a passenger who might have had a better aim) and, as it smashed on the road beside me, stuck his arm out of the window with fist clenched in triumph.

Then there was this peculiar piece in the usually emollient Irish Times, bemoaning the fact that, while drivers suffer the indignity of  ‘inappropriate speed checks on dual carriageways’, cyclists are permitted to ride about helmetless with impunity.  (Bike helmets are, by the way, thankfully not yet compulsory in Ireland.)

What is it about cyclists that inspires such disproportionate ire?  True, some are annoying, but surely not so much as white van drivers or those elderly men in hats who hog the fast motorway lanes?  Dawn Foster’s other blog (see above) and Oliver James’s book The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza
which I’m currently reading, gave some possible clues.  Foster writes about the extraordinarily virulent ‘anti-scrounger’ hysteria whipped up by our nice new government with its cuddly Lib Dem accessories while James analyses the emotional distress which accompanies relative materialism (as distinct from the logical materialism that results from not having enough money to buy your next meal).  It occurs to me that it’s basically about ensuring that everyone is playing the game: clambering up the career ladder, ditto the  property one (isn’t it odd how the housing benefit screeches were directed towards the powerless tenants rather than the landlords who actually profit from extortionate rents?) and surrounding oneself with shiny bits and pieces.  And cars, owned and driven, are perfect playing pieces, being so homogenous and easily confused (it’s as hard to recognize which silver hatchback is yours in the car park as to remember whether you chose yellow or blue for the current round of Ludo).

And so anyone who doesn’t play properly (good job, owned house, new car) is consquently suspect,  however otherwise dull or unexceptional.  And that explains why, other than the token grumble, no one really minds that the bankers have conned us out of more money than we can even imagine and are continuing to do so; at least they played the game, even if they cheated.  Or, since no one is quite sure of the rules once the banker is allowed to use the whole cash supply plus whatever he invents  (imagine Monopoly with that variation) perhaps they haven’t cheated at all, just played the game really, really well.

And then I cheered myself up entirely by watching The Story Of The Weeping Camel [DVD] which reminded me that the world is full of people who have no idea about the game and for whom even my bike would be an object of fascinated humour.  Watch it, and be filled with joy (though you might weep even more than the camel).

A few weeks ago it occurred to me, as I leaned desperately on the wardrobe doors in an attempt to make them shut, that I probably had enough clothes, and that it might be a good idea not to buy any more for the next twelve months or so.  I’d been justifying the heaps of stuff to myself by pointing out that almost all were either from charity shops or from the fair trade suppliers Traidcraft and People Tree and that accordingly every indulgence was in fact an act of benevolence and global justice.   Unfortunately Myself  replied, with what I considered rather pompous alacrity,  that, however recycled, organic, ethical and inexpensive the garments, such a quantity of cotton still required inordinate amounts of water to be produced and that my T-shirt drawer was, by any rational standards, in danger of being seriously over-resourced.

So I made the Marie Curie wellies (pictured above) my last purchase (for Glastonbury,  ironically, in the Year of No Mud, but no doubt they’ll come in handy next time) and prepared to augment my sustainable sackcloth with nothing but a little ash.   Oddly, however, far from feeling discontented, I’m happier with the stuff I’ve got than ever before.  I seem to have more choice every morning of what to wear, more things that go with other things, often unexpectedly, and less angst about what shape appears in the bedroom mirror.   An odd sense of liberation overcomes me as I glide through M&S on the way to the walnut loaves with no temptation to rifle through the sale rack or see if there’s any BOGOF on the opaque tights.  It’s irrelevant that what I really need to go with that skirt is a purple cardigan – I’ve got three grey, two blue and a brown one, and one of those will simply have to cosy its way into the breach.  As I say, it’s only been a few weeks, and no doubt more insidious challenges will creep in with the autumn leaves, but it’s a reassuring start…

A few weeks ago a programme on BBC television called ‘How to Live a Simple Life’, followed the attempts of vicar Peter Owen Jones to do so, specifically by trying to live without using money for a certain period of time.  I didn’t see the beginning, but watched the second episode, in which our old college friend the Franciscan Philippe Yates explained that Christian poverty is not about self-sufficiency but about vulnerability.  (How this vulnerability is demonstrated by religious orders who have, if not legal ownership, control of very substantial resources is of course another question…)  Owen Jones then made a ‘Franciscan’ pilgrimage (walk-cum-hitchhike) across Southern England, begging for food and accommodation with the assistance of his camera crew and, occasionally, the Anglican clergy network.  However, during the third episode, during which he was back home, receiving generously filled casserole dishes from his lady parishioners,  the whole doing-without-money thing collapsed suddenly and ignominously.  The cause of the crisis was sadly and predictably banal; nothing more than the due date of his car’s insurance and MOT.

As vicar of a rural parish, it was of course understandable that Owen Jones would need to visit members of his flock living in far-flung locations at times incompatible with rural bus timetables and inconvenient to walk to.  But there was no discussion whatsoever about the feasibility of his doing without his own car for a period; it was simply stated as being essential and the experiment was immediately over.  Would it have been impossible for the wealthy neighbours who had been so lavish with the well-hung game and elaborate puddings to have offered their services in an emergency driving rota?  And for a man who had walked at least part of the way to Devon, could a bicycle not conceivably have satisfied his more local transport needs?

After commuting to work, doing the school run and big supermarket shop, driving to church must be one of the most regular journeys made by drivers in Britain and Ireland.  What is more, my husband (hereafter MJ), who goes out running on Sunday mornings, or used to, until he decided that he’d really prefer not to spend the rest of the day in A&E or on the mortuary slab, finds that they are often  the most inconsiderate and dangerous motorists he ever encounters.  Whether this is because their heads are filled with spiritual musings, they are still jubilant from Saturday evening celebrations, they are confident of going to heaven and don’t mind who they take with them, or because the roads are relatively empty and so they’re not taking much care to look, we don’t know, but it’s certainly not an ideal witness.

The question ‘What would Jesus drive?’ has, since it was first asked ten years or so ago, spread out to encompass the entire irony spectrum, from an indie rock band to the website of the UK Christian Car Club (‘cars provide an ideal means from which to share our faith’ – bumper stickers, presumably?).  The answers range from 4×4s through hybrids of questionable efficiency to ‘Nothing, he’d walk’ via some really quite execrable puns (easy to Google if you feel like a cringe) but oddly, bikes don’t seem to get a mention anywhere.

To make up a little of the deficiency, I thought I’d describe for you my own journey to church and back this morning.  Of course not everyone can do it, and I’m certainly not suggesting that Jesus will manifest his second coming in Lycra and cleated shoes, but it’s easier than you might think.  For a few weeks now I’ve been going to Mass more regularly at The Graan, a Passionist monastery a few miles outside Enniskillen.  The most well-known member of the community there is Brian D’Arcy, presenter of the Radio 2 Sunday Half Hour, who is a persistent thorn in the flesh of the Catholic hierarchy and regularly demonstrates the kind of honest and courageous vulnerability that characterizes the true spirit of Saint Francis.

I’d visited The Graan occasionally over the four years that we’ve lived in Enniskillen, especially when we lived on the west side of the town, when it was a fairly feasible, if dodgy walk.  Unfortunately, being in the countryside,  and attracting a largely rural congregation, it has almost no other non-motoring worshippers (I’ve never seen another), and walking up the busy access road with people carriers and 4×4s constantly swooshing past, induces rather too much vulnerability and too little tranquillity of spirit.  Once in the grounds, the cars are corralled into a series of one-way parking lanes to ensure a speedy and efficient exodus at the end of Mass.  All very sensible, I’m sure, but it does give the place,  externally, at least, something of the feel of a theme park or drive-in burger bar. A couple of months ago, though, I discovered a back way which gave, in all senses, an alternative perspective…

This morning when I woke up the sky looked fairly optimistic, so I put on a long summer dress and sandals, planning to add a cardigan if the few clouds decided to consolidate.  It was the sort of dress that used to be impossible to wear while riding a bike, as the skirt would inevitably get bunched up between the wheel and brake blocks, bringing me to an ignominous stop and leaving the dress oil-stained and holey in a way that wasn’t even good on a Sunday.  A couple of years ago, however, MJ constructed a brilliant skirt guard, of the Continental variety, out of garden trellis, and since then I can be as flowing as I like.  It has the added advantage of making the bike, which is actually quite a good one, appear even less attractive to potential thieves.   Anyway, the point turned to be moot, as the clouds formed a substantial majority, and a dark grey one at that, and I changed into tights and a shortish skirt (quicker to dry).  I very rarely cycle in trousers, except for waterproof ones when it’s really pouring and I don’t wear special shoes, either, unless I’m going for a long ride on my little red Moulton which has cleated pedals.  These are the shoes I wore today

which are perfect for either cycling or walking, and a bit girlie all the same.

Here’s the rest of the stuff I took with me (clockwise, from the left):

1. Waterproof poncho that folds into its own pocket (from Millets, doesn’t have to be so garish, but I bought it for Glastonbury, and anyway it has its advantages as you’ll see later)

2. Spare linen bag for shopping on the way home (as Tim Minchin says, ‘Take your canvas bags…’)  Actually I ended up getting a carrier bag too (see below)

3. Camera case with velcro strap that attaches very conveniently to the handebars (and I put the camera strap over the handebar too, for extra security).  I don’t usually take a camera to church with me, obviously, even if we do have a celebrity priest…

4. Spare earphones (I’ve been caught that way too often).

5. Guardian linen backpack from Glastonbury last year – extremely convenient for carrying just a few things plus a reminder that this year’s is only ten days or so away…

6.iPod.  I usually take my other one, with classical music on it (nothing like a bit of baroque for the long slope) but as mentioned above, I’m in pre-Glastonbury mode now, and listening to stuff by this year’s line-up.

7. Phone.  If I was a more serious or less pampered cyclist this would be a puncture repair kit – instead I could use this to call MJ in an emergency.

8. Purse containing small change for collection mite (as in widow’s, not dust) and Sunday paper.

9. Tissues. I’ve been caught that way as well. One thing you can be sure of if you cycle anywhere, regardless of the weather and your state of health; your nose will be starting to run when you arrive.  And blowing it on your skirt isn’t nice, especially when you’ve jettisoned the long flowing one.

10. Deodorant.  Not generally necessary but on this particular trip, as you’ll see, I do tend to glow slightly by the end and it makes me feel a bit more nice to know, especially when the pews are crowded.

It takes around half a hour to cycle from here to The Graan but I like to allow an extra fifteen minutes or so to get my breath back and avoid the last-minute cars, so as the  service starts at 10.30, and I will be stopping to take photos, I plan to leave by 9.45 at the latest.  Putting animals inside and outside, and doling out their milk, takes a few extra minutes, but I am out by ten to ten.  Freewheeling down to the bottom of the road I meet our next-door-but-one  neighbour who, having failed by four votes on the third recount to become our M.P. is instead embracing his retirement with good-natured gusto and a brand new bicycle.

The road is fairly empty but I take my usual route towards town along the grandly-named Great Northern Way, an old railway path parallel with the road and mainly used by teenagers walking to and from school.  It’s a reasonable surface for cycling, without too much broken glass in comparison with the rest of the town, and fringed with trees and banks of wildflowers.

The song on my iPod is Jackson Browne’s Thunder and I wonder whether it is a bad omen – the sky is getting very dark. Half way along, the path crosses a road (with a couple of dog-legs to slow us cyclists down – very thoughtful, but wouldn’t it be safer for everyone to slow the cars?) and here a plump man with fluffy yellow hair and a pink T-shirt stares in amazement at me out of his BMW V5 window,  a giant toddler in a giant toy car.At the end of the GNW I cross the main road, and take a little dog-legged back road around the back of a terraced row (motorists use it as a short-cut too, so it’s a bit hazardous at school run time) onto Factory Road, past its long-derelict namesake

and the G.A.A. (Gaelic Athletic Association) ground, home to Fermanagh Gaelic football team (which won an unxpected victory against neighbouring Cavan yesterday, to local jubilation – far more important than that soccer thing in South Africa.)

After this the route comes off the road again, along a wooded path which skirts the edge of the hospital and health centre grounds, along the edge of Lough Erne.

The Erne Hospital is a pleasant little place, smelling of toast and mild disinfectant, beautifully situated next to the lake and in easy walking distance from the town centre and many of the larger housing estates.  So of course it is being replaced by a giant private finance initiative monstrosity several miles out, where everyone will no doubt have to drive (at great car parking profit to the developers) and toast smells are most unlikely.  The shell of the new hospital is virtually complete, after months of thick mud across the roads and local residents’ houses, and the workers (mostly Spanish, as the consortium is Spanish-owned) are preparing for the next two years of interior construction.  Presumably the site of the present hospital will then be flogged off for yet more luxury waterside apartments or chain-store shopping centres.  I don’t hold out much hope for this mellow old stone wall or the mature trees once that happens…

At the end of this path, under the road bridge, is a small island.  When we first moved here, four years ago, it was full of ducklings and cygnets.  Now there are none.  It’s the same story across the lough, at least in the Enniskillen area; fewer and fewer wildfowl every year.  We’ve only seen two cygnets this year, both on the small lough opposite our house.  No one official seems to be very concerned or even to have noticed the change.  We suppose it is due to a combination of factors; the massive amount of building during the so-called property boom when huge speculative blocks of flats were built which now stand empty, many unfinished, the enormous new premises of Waterways Ireland, ironically built on the marshlands it might have been expected to protect, the motorized cruisers with their powerful wakes, washing away delicate habitats and nests, the quantities of salt poured on the roads during the cold winter, now washed into the lough and increasingly chemical agricultural methods such as the intensive pig-farming which the WWF says is causing the eutrophication of Lough Erne.

Then I’m back on the road again, past the library and fortified police station and over the old bridge.  The rowers from Portora Royal School are out practising, which is great; a pity they’re usually accompanied by coaches in fast motor boats -  the wake from these often looks worse than the big cruisers.

The people round here are, on the whole, well-meaning and generous; they’ve gone through immensely difficult times with courage and compassion and are working to create a better society for the future.  But the lakes are so big and the population so small that they just don’t realize the fragility of the natural environment around them.

A few yards further on is the Round ‘O’, a park and jetty, and another example of destruction for the best of motives.  We used to stop here every morning on the way to school and feed the ducks and swans; often thirty or forty at a time.  But then, two years ago, the jetties were upgraded, the grassy banks replaced with tarmac and the muddy edge where the wildfowl wandered replaced with an access road so that boat-owners could drive right up to the lough.  Maybe it improved the amenity of the site for them, but the birds, and the tiny children who used  to toddle along the quiet paths have almost all gone.

After the Round O I pass the gates of Portora, where Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett were educated, and the other week Simon Callow gave a brilliant pre-premiere of his new Shakespeare one-man show.  From time to time we get these odd little treats here, and this, combined with the stunning countryside and genuine friendships, more than make up for the political oddities and the weather.

After Portora I’m on the Donegal Road, coming out of Enniskillen and soon turn onto the Derrygonnelly road, and the hard bit of the ride.  It’s not very hard, really, just a long shallow rise past the recycling centre, the oil depot (most houses are heated with oil around here) and the quarry.  I use my usual technique of looking into the verge, at the masses of wild flowers, which takes my mind off my calf muscles.

The song on my iPod is Turin Brakes’ Long Distance, though, and it’s starting to feel like it. But The Graan comes visible quite soon and just when I’m feeling that I’ve really been riding for long enough (it’s been raining for some time now, but not hard enough to make it worth unpacking my poncho and is windier than usual), I reach the little side turning and the final road up to the monastery.

I usually stop halfway up the hill here to lock my bike  and make myself respectable, but the farmer (presumably) who owns the cows has parked his Landrover there and is leaning thoughtfully over the fence.

“A good way to be travelling.” he says, by way of greeting, nodding at my bike, and I grin and pant past.  This bit is steep, that’s why I’m usually walking it, and I’m down to first gear now and feeling distinctly rosy.  I stop around the next corner, lock my bike to the fence, comb my hair, blow my nose and bung on a bit more deodorant.   Then I walk up the rest of the hill, past the main part of the monastery, which is now a nursing home

and into the church.  At first when I did this I felt a bit awkward about being damp and red-faced amongst the soignée attendees strolling in from their cars, but I don’t think there was really any need.  I’m still glowing a bit  through the first readings, but by the time we stand for the Gospel I’m back into equilibrium.  No one is moving away from me, anyway, and at the sign of the peace my neighbours are all happy to shake my hand.  Anyway, not everyone here is a middle-aged motorist; there are quite a few residents of the nursing home sitting in their wheechairs teaching us more acutely than a mere cyclist about vulnerability and patience.

During the sermon I can hear the rain pattering hard on the roof, but during the Creed the stained glass windows light up optimistically.  I’m hoping for a bit of sunshine when we go out, but it is still raining, and harder, so I put my poncho on before unlocking the bike.  It should have the extra advantage of making me extremely visible, but I switch on my dynamo lights as well, just in case. The view from here is still marvellous,  anyway, despite the raindrops on the lens.

The obverse of the tedious ride up to The Graan is the easy sail down again; I can do almost the whole of the stretch to the Donegal Road without turning the pedals.  I note the state of decay of the fox that was run over a few weeks ago, but decide that you’d probably prefer not to have a picture.  The visibility of the poncho certainly works; a Mercedes driver signals and pulls out a good ten feet despite the fact that I’m tucked well into a layby, taking pictures of the view.  Talking of which…

At the junction I stop at the petrol station shop for the Observer. They’re good for local produce too, so I get some potatoes and blackcurrant jam.  I now realise the deficiencies in Tim Minchin’s lyric writing.  What he should have written was, ‘Take your canvas bags to the supermarket, but if it looks like rain and you’re planning to get a Sunday paper, don’t forget to bring along a reused plastic one as well, so that you don’t end up with a soggy wedge of dirty sludge.’  But since he didn’t, and I didn’t, I had to take a new one. When I come out, the rain has stopped, or almost (making my carrier bag even more reprehensible) , so I take off my poncho and enjoy a refreshing and uneventful ride back home.   Unfortunately there are more cars on the road now, and I’m overtaken with inches to spare by three black 4×4s in a row, followed by a courteous Daimler who gives me plenty of room.   The drivers of vintage cars are generally the most thoughtful, and the giant new monstrosities the least, forgetting that a cyclist is both alive and moving, and therefore appreciates a little more leeway than you would give a traffic cone.   On the Great Northern Way a group of birds fly across the path in front of me; at least one a big rosy-breasted bullfinch.  They flew into this tree, if you’d like to look for them.

The whole trip, including the service itself, shopping and stopping to take photographs, has taken about two hours and twenty minutes; maybe an hour more than it would have taken by car (if I’d had one.) But I’d have had to go on the main roads, and would have missed all the most enjoyable bits of the journey, as well as the scents of the flowers, the close-up birds, the smell of the cleansed air after the rain, the feel of the air on my face  (and, to be quite honest,  the sight of the dead fox).  I’d also still have my recommended mild exercise to do, for which I might even have driven to the gym, at the cost of yet more time, money and oil.  I’d have missed the friendly farmer, and might have had a more definitive encounter with the pink T-shirted toddler-man, and I wouldn’t have that pleasant almost-ache in my knees that tells me that I’ve done the right thing with them, and can enjoy a substantial dinner without any nagging twinges of nutritional conscience.  Talking of which…

[note: This post was first written around a year ago, pre-Copenhagen, when the mechanics of climate change weren't quite so generally well-known as they are now and when a 2 degree rise didn't seem quite so inevitable.  I spent some time thinking about how best to tinker with it, but decided in the end, especially in the light of the East Anglian hysteria, to keep it as it is for the time being.  Apologies, therefore, if it appears to be stating the obvious. ]

…Planet is the usual word.  It’s a pity it’s so misleading.  Whatever we are likely to destroy with our oil-glugging lifestyle, it isn’t the chunk of rock rotating around the sun.  Earth sounds a bit cuddlier, but isn’t much more helpful, while the environment sounds like something only a geography teacher would get excited about.  The trouble with all these words is that they sound like slightly geeky minority interests.  You know; Charlotte collects stamps, Oliver plays chess and Duncan saves the planet. Yawn.

 What we really mean is us, the earth’s inhabitants; we humans together with the other creatures, animal and plants, with whom we share this little space, everything that provides us with food and shelter and most of everything that gives us inspiration and comfort.   Not the human race in centuries to come but our fellow men and women in the world now, certainly our children, and probably ourselves, unless we’re planning to pop our clogs within the next few months. 

 Yes, it’s all the things you’ve been feeling a bit awkward about as long as you can remember, the rainforests and pandas, but now it’s oak trees and polar bears as well, in fact most plants and animals except for cacti and mosquitoes, and most people who aren’t  billionaire survivalists (and even they are likely to have a pretty dull time, with no one else but cacti, mosquitoes and other billionaire survivalists to talk to). 

 So this is about global warming, right?  I know about that, it’s er….

 …  Um.  It’s a bit like girls and the offside rule, we know we’ve had it explained a few times, but the actual mechanics of the thing still seem to slide around to the dark bit at the back of our brains.  Briefly, global warming is the rise in the earth’s temperature which happens as a result of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the air.  These gases, most importantly carbon dioxide and methane, are called ‘greenhouse’ because they let the short-wave heat from the sun through to the earth, but trap the long-wave heat rays that are reflected back again. So, just like the little glass hut  your Grandad grew his prize tomatoes in, the earth gets hotter and hotter. 

  Of course, we need some greenhouse gases, otherwise too much of the heat that reached the earth would bounce off again and the global temperature would be around -18 degrees.  Not exactly bikini weather.  The problem now is that, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the concentrations of these gases, which were just right to sustain life as we knew it, have gone up dramatically.  Carbon dioxide concentrations have increased by around a third and  those of methane have doubled.  So far we haven’t seen too much impact on temperatures, as most of the heat has been absorbed by the sea, but we’ve already seen global increases of 0.8 degrees, and are set for far more to come.

 A short digression for those who, like me, weren’t paying attention during geography lessons at school.  When we read about global temperature rises of a few degrees and wonder what all the fuss is about, we are probably confusing weather and climate.  As the NASA website puts it, “climate is what you expect, like a very hot summer, and weather is what you get, like a hot day with pop-up thunderstorms”. 

 It’s a bit like taking a pack of shuffled cards and turning them over one by one.  You might get an ace first time, but then have to turn over another twenty or thirty cards until you find another one.  That’s like weather, and the wide variation between one day and the next.  But if you were to keep drawing cards from the deck and reshuffling it for long enough, you’d find that an ace turned up on average once in every thirteen cards.  That’s more like climate; the long-term trend. If you found, over thousands of deals, that you were getting aces more or less often than that, you’d know that there was something dodgy about that pack of cards.  In the same way, increases in the average global temperature, though they may sound small, represent real and important changes in our lives. 

 For example, the terribly hot European summer of 2003, when up to 35,000 may have died from the heat, forest fires raged, crops failed and there were widespread water shortages, was only 2.3 degrees  higher than the average.  And in the other direction, during the deepest freeze of the last Ice Age, when New York was under a mile of solid ice, average global temperatures were around six degrees lower than they are now.

 But so far it’s less than a degree hotter than…?

 Than before the Industrial Revolution, yes.  But there’s enough greenhouse gases already in the system to make another half or degree of warming inevitable.  There’s nothing we can do about that; it’s already there, just hasn’t shown through in the actual temperatures  yet. So we’re talking about a 1.4 degree rise, even if everyone immediately stops doing everything.  What really matters is how much hotter than that it’s going to get.  As I write this the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) are estimating a rise of between the minimum of 1.4 and 5.8 degrees.

 That’s nearly six degrees.  

 It is, yes. The earth was six degrees hotter once before, 251 million years ago, during an episode called the Permian Crisis.  It sounds like something your granny might have at the hairdressers, but it led to the extinction of at least 90% of all plant and animal species.  If we got anywhere near that level of global warming then the prospects for any sort of life would be pretty slim. Actually, as we’ll see soon, the rise could be even more than six degrees.

 There seems to be a lot of uncertainty about these figures.  Can’t these scientists be any more exact than that?

 Not until we are.  There is a lot of uncertainty, but it’s mainly about what the actual greenhouse gas emissions are going to be over the next few years.  And that, of course, depends on what we do.  If we continue as we are, ‘business as usual’ then we will definitely be looking at the upper end of the range and at widespread disaster.  If we act immediately to cut our emissions and to help others to do the same then hopefully we can keep the rise to a manageable level.  

 Which would be?

 Probably under two degrees.  That’s because of the direct effects of a higher rise but also because of something called ‘positive feedbacks’.  (No, not the kind you get for buying stuff on eBay.)  These are effects of global warming which themselves also speed up the warming process.  In the European heatwave of 2003, one of the scariest things that happened was that plants, severely stressed by the heat and drought, shut down their photosynthesis mechanisms.  Now instead of absorbing carbon dioxide they were producing it.  The same kind of thing is already happening in the soil, which normally stores carbon but at higher temperatures, where bacteria work faster, releases it as carbon dioxide.  Meanwhile layers of permafrost are melting in the Arctic, Alaska and Siberia, exposing ancient peat bogs which give out carbon dioxide and methane.  As one ecologist put it,

‘We are unplugging the refrigerator in the far north.  Everything that is preserved there is going to rot.’

Another type of feedback happens at the poles, where traditionally white snow and ice have reflected back a large part of the sun’s rays.  Now that they are melting, more heat is absorbed, and more snow and ice melt, in a vicious warming spiral.  

Two degrees of warming is generally considered to be the point at which these kinds of feedback would become unstoppable, pulling us into faster and fiercer temperature rises.  And these feedback effects aren’t included in the IPCC estimates, which is why, once they really take hold, a rise of over six degrees could easily happen.  We have been warned….

I’m sure all the buffs will have seen it long ago (after all, it’s Werner Herzog in the title role) but here’s a film that I expected to be worthy and found also to be romantic, sad, epic and funny.   Not bad for eighteen minutes.  Enjoy…

I’ve recently been reading Stop Global Warming, Change the World by Jonathan Neale and was surprised, impressed and heartened.

The rather naff title led me to expect the usual guff about appliances on standby, celebrity recipes and encouraging your neighbours (it’s always your neighbours, I notice) to use their cars less.  If I’d known anything about Jonathan Neale, I’d have realised that it would have none of this nonsense.

Actually, he could have got away with stretching his material into several books, and is to be commended for fitting it all into one.  The book is made up of five parts, most of which I’ve read twice already, so densely packed are they with good stuff.

Part One, The Scale of the Problem has three chapters: Abrupt Climate Change (a vital adjective), Poor People are not the Problem and Sacrifice is not the Answer.  From the titles alone, Neale’s argument, that social justice and climate change action are complementary and symbiotic, is evident, but the detail is well worth investigating.

Part Two, Solutions That Could Work Now is especially useful for the campaigner, setting out viable goals in areas of electricity, buildings, transport etc.  A chapter called Solutions that Won’t Work Now (carbon capture, nuclear power, hydroelectric dams, biofuels) is particularly helpful.

In Part Three, Why the Rich and Powerful Won’t Act, Neale analyses neoliberalism, corporate power and the myth of unlimited growth.  Part Four, Climate Politics, gives a potted history of the climate change campaign and explains why personal and market solutions won’t bring about the changes that are necessary.

Finally, in Part Five, he analyses ‘Capitalist Disasters’, notably Darfur and New Orleans and ends with an inspiring chapter entitled ‘Another World is Possible’.  It is, and this book shows us how.

Browsing the teenage fiction section of the library the other day,  I came across The Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd.  I borrowed it, planning to read a few pages and then pass it on to my sons (16 and nearly 13) but it proved impossible to rip it from my cold green hands until I’d got to the end.

The novel, as suggested by the title, is set in 2015 when, following storms which have devastated our western coasts, the U.K. is the first nation to bring in carbon rationing.   It is narrated by Laura, a middle class sixth former from Greenwich in South London who plays bass in a straight edge punk band, argues with her parents and elder sister and is falling in love with the boy next door.  The author is a teacher at a sixth form college and knows her environment well, with a few touches (the iPod has mutated into an ePod; a new quasi-anarchist hydro symbol is being scratched onto petrol cars) to remind us that the story is set a few years (but only a few) in the future.  The love story is predictable, Jane Austen’s old favourite, and Laura’s dysfunctional parents distinctly George and Pauline Moleish (is it ever possible for  teenage diaries to avoid echoes of Adrian?)  but these don’t really matter, as the focus is upon the events surrounding the characters rather than their individual characteristics.

The story begins gently, with Mum’s attempts to negotiate the bus, their central heating being turned down and the family’s cuisine morphing from Waitrose ready meals to locally-grown carrots.  Pretty soon, however, we’re into a summer of heatwave and drought, paralysing power outages,  riots, torrential rains and the flooding of large parts of London.  Meanwhile Laura’s cousin reports of the catastrophe wreaked by a hurricane across the western U.S.  and we watch as European riot police strike down climate change protestors from Rome to Brussels.  It’s all very much more than plausible; the virtually inevitable migration of catastrophes that are already taking place in the majority world.

The book, and its sequel, The Carbon Diaries 2017, are to be filmed for the BBC, so there will no doubt be much discussion (and dismissive contempt from the usual ’sceptics’) of  Saci Lloyd’s  not-quite dystopia.  Meanwhile I’ll be interested to see what our boys make of it…

The extraction of so-called oil from tar sands is one of the most unpleasant, extravagant and destructive activities to be carried out anywhere at any time.  So how comforting to know that the (84% publicly owned) RBS thinks it’s a good place to invest our money.  (A fund for climate chaos, in today’s Guardian).  Joined-up government in action?

I went to see Newton Faulkner in Belfast on Sunday night – a fantastic gig, and he finished with a few wise, realistic but optimistic words about climate change, and this song from his new album.  If only the world could be filled with Newtons….

(From The Pen & Inkblog on our rejigged and refurbished Crystal Bard Books site)

Usually we order most of our Italian books direct from the publishers, or from our friendly Italian wholesaler, but a couple of times a year I go to buy a few in person, to see what’s popular in the bookshops and to add to our second-hand collection. When possible I go by train, but starting in Northern Ireland, with a largish chunk of sea to navigate before even reaching St Pancras, it tends to be cumbersome and expensive. ( Perhaps we should launch a carbon offset scheme whereby our customers fly and drive with squeaky-clean consciences while paying me to take the train? It would be more practical than a lot of such wheezes, but I somehow doubt whether it would catch on.) Anyway, the trains and ferries resolutely refused to mesh together this time, so I flew with Aer Lingus from Dublin to Rome.

As always, the trip began with a long bus journey (we don’t have a car, either for business or pleasure and your packages are taken to the post office on foot or by bike. Often this one.) One of the oddities of Irish geography is that the direct route from Donegal in the Republic of Ireland to Dublin, its capital (as any fule kno*), is through Enniskillen in Northern Ireland. Consequently, we in Enniskillen can take the (now really quite regular) service with Bus Eireann, the Irish state bus company, and pay the driver in euro, which makes us feel quite cosmopolitan. I like travelling by bus here, the combination of ease, mild eccentricity and potential chaos which makes Ireland, like Italy, interesting if not invariably comfortable.

Dublin airport, sadly, is neither interesting nor particularly comfortable, especially when my flight leaves at seven in the morning, and I don’t feel like paying for an entire night at a hotel for a few paltry hours.  Luckily I find an unoccupied banquette in the food hall and clutch at a little sporadic sleep, interrupted by headmistressy security announcements and the most appaling musak I’ve ever heard: covers by a girl band who, though they screeched more or less in tune, seem to have encountered human emotion nowhere outside a Vulcan tourist guide.  But then, it came from the direction of McDonald’s, so perhaps it shouldn’t have been such a surprise.

The plane journey next morning was a plain journey, as is, probably, the best that can be hoped for.

In Rome it was raining, fairly hard.  It does rain in Italy, at least for the moment, until we manage to turn the Mediterranean into a total desert, though somehow that’s the bit of memory that tends to go blank at suitcase-packing time.  Fortunately I’ve been in Italy for long enough to recall some quite spectacular soakings and had a compact umbrella almost handy,  stowed away beneath a small warehouse full of bubble wrap.  (Lest this should give a false impression of impressive forethought, I should mention here that several small but essential items of clothing which should have been in my bag were, at this moment and until my return, completing their nonchalant airing on the bedroom radiator.)

From the airport I took the train to Trastevere station (pictured right, on Tuesday in the sun), close to both the hotel and the Sunday morning Porta Portese street market from where I’ve bought books before.  My original plan had been to take my bags to the hotel first, but as it was already after twelve, and the market was due to close at one, I thought I had better make my way there straightaway.  I was concerned that, in the growing deluge, the booksellers might have already struck camp, but we’re a hardy lot, and they were still man- and womanfully bearing up with the aid of a few sheets of polythene.  I purchases a few piles of the drier volumes and remedied my sartorial deficiencies  at the modest price three pairs for six euro, thus preserving the frugal nature of the expedition.

Thus encumbered,  I made my way carefully to the hotel.  Carefully, that is, in part owing to the notoriously random habits of Roman motorists, but principally due to those of their dogs.  The canines to be seen in Rome are, on the whole, relatively small, but the evidence suggests that each must deposit near its own bodyweight of waste matter onto the pavements daily.  Either that, or it has the consistency of one of those novelty flannels which increase dramatically in size when brought into contact with water.

Anyway, treading gently, for I trod upon the drains, and, with the aid of my excellent, albeit by now somewhat soggy Giunti street map (available here – that is, not my precious dried-out copy with the sellotape corsetting and the bookshops marked with biro crosses but a nice new one that you can deface in your own inimitable style ) I reached the  Rome Nice Room on the Via Daniello Bartoli.

Rarely can a room have been more appropriately, if less elegantly named.  Not only the room, but also the proprietors, were delightful, helpful, interested and happy to switch between Italian and English as the twists and turns of the conversation required. After a quick shower, in which red turned out to mean cold and red hot, in a demonstration of the arbitrary nature of the signifier worthy of Umberto Eco himself, I headed out again to cross the Tevere into the Eternal City itself.

Roman trams, rather unexpectedly, turned out to be newer and less atmospheric that the ones I took in Milan last year, and ones like this, decorated entirely in adverts for Glee, breathtakingly globalized.  However,  it glided swiftly and painlessly into the city and deposited me in front of the big Feltrinelli bookshop, so I abandoned, with only a small sigh, my nostalglia for pale wood and creaking iron, and revelled in the efficiency.

Choosing books at a market stall is largely a matter of luck; anything that isn’t obviously outrageously obscene, dull, outdated or overpriced is worth consideration.  By contrast, in a big bookshop almost everything would do; the difficulty is in second-guessing quite what you, our fellow readers and cari clienti, would pounce on most joyfully if you’d been there with me.  Parallel texts are always helpful, whether your first language is English or Italian, so I chose a few, including William Blake and T. S. Eliot, together with translations of Bill Bryson’s Story of Nearly Everything and Raymond Chandler’s Lady in the Lake.

I was, as always, acutely conscious of Aer Lingus baggage allowances and of the fact that I had another full day in Rome on Monday, so I limited myself to a small collection of newish fiction and, after a vague ramble and brief conversation with the cats of the Torre Argentina, headed back to the Nice Room.  One disadvantage of travelling alone is that going out in the evening isn’t much fun, so I’d eaten properly (grilled vegetables and pasta ai funghi) in Trastevere at lunchtime, and just picked up some pecorino, bread, tomatoes and wine to eat in the room in the evening.  It gave me the opportunity to remember exactly what Italian television is like, and, for, alas, the two are by no means incompatible, to enjoy the luxury of falling asleep ridiculously early.

to be continued…

* If this phrase fails to ring distant bells, may we prescribe a short dose of Master Molesworth – just type Willans or Searle into the search box of Crystal Bard Books (sorry, we don’t have any in Italian yet).