Just been watching the BBC TV news about the current climate change meeting taking place in the States. George Bush says he won’t do anything about emissions unless China does it too. Average CO2 emissions per person in the USA? 20 tonnes. And China? Just 3.5 tonnes.

Stop pointing to China as the world’s biggest polluter George. Of course it’s big - it’s an enormous country. America is nearly six times as bad when you discount the size difference.

We ALL need to make changes.  Squabbling over who does what first is just a childish waste of time.

That’s how an excellent article in this week’s Spectator describes the way Western countries are attempting to limit the growth of developing nations such as China and India, on the pretext of limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

On 27 September, George Bush - a man who has consistently opposed all attempts to get US emissions reduced - will host a conference in Washington at which he is widely expected to call for the imposition of cuts in emissions in developing nations. 

His call will ignore three key facts:

* Emissions per head of population in developing nations are way below those of developed countries.

* Large chunks of their emissions are due to the fact that they are now producing goods for the West. We’ve effectively shifted our own manufacturing abroad, because it saves us money.

* We have no right to demand that foreigners continue to live in poverty. We had our industrial revolution; now they are having theirs.  

The original Kyoto treaty - from which Bush withdrew - exempted developing nations for these very reasons.

As the Spectator article points out, since 1997, Western efforts to cut carbon emissions have come to almost naught. US carbon emissions are now 15% higher than they were in 1990 - the baseline used for all Kyoto targets. Japan’s emissions have risen by 11%. While EU carbon emissions have fallen by 2.9%, overall greenhouse gas emissions have risen.

In spite of this record of non-achievement, the West is increasingly hectoring the developing world on its carbon emissions.

But look at the facts:

Per head of population, in 2003 the Chinese emitted 3.2 tonnes of carbon and India 1.9 tonnes. The US, on the other hand, emitted 19.8 tonnes of carbon per capita. The UK emitted 9.4 tonnes, Germany 9.8 tonnes and France 6.4 tonnes. And, of course, these figures would have been even higher, had we not outsourced much of our manufacturing to countries such as China. 

I’d encorage you to read the Spectator article. It’s an illuminating and somewhat depressing piece of journalism that points out the utter hypocrisy of Western governments.

Watching the BBC TV news last night, it was obvious that climate change is now having a very real effect on the lives of pretty much everyone around the world.

In mainland Europe, temperatures are soaring way above normal levels in a number of countries, causing devastating firestorms and� consequent loss of crops through drought. Similar stories are unfolding in many other nations, with drought, desertification� and fire affecting regions as diverse as Africa and the USA.

Meanwhile, in the UK we have been enduring rain storms for weeks on end and it looks like we’re headed for the wettest summer on record. Large parts of the country are flooded. We’ve had giant hail stones in the middle of London (interesting, but shovelling six inches of ice off my kitchen roof is not really my idea of fun).� Parts of London have been flooded, and in other areas of the country whole villages have been cut off, resulting in a number of deaths. Floods have inundated water treatment plants. The army is� helping to deliver water to people whose supplies are now polluted.� Meanwhile, flood water and sewage flows through their living rooms.� What a great summer.

Whilst it may be� debatable to link� all these events� directly to climate change,� the evidence is certainly strong. Either way, scientific research has now conclusively proven that human emissions of greenhouse� gases are� bringing about changes in the world’s climate� that are leading to erratic and more devastating weather patterns, coupled with a gradual increase in average global temperatures.�

And now, a scientific� report published in� Nature yesterday states� that� increases in both rainfall and drought are� being caused by human activity.� Ironic, perhaps, that some people are drowning whilst others are dying of thirst, but that’s the way things are going.�

Global warming doesn’t simply mean that it’s getting hotter. It also means that we’re in for much greater devastation from floods, tornados and� mudslides� in many areas.

Anyone want help me build an ark?

Claims that increased solar activity is the cause of global warming – rather than man-made greenhouse gases – have now been comprehensively disproved by a scientific study.

The study was undertaken by Mike Lockwood, a physicist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Chilton, UK, and Claus Frolich of the World Radiation Centre in Davos, Switzerland.

It shows that, since the mid-80s, solar activity has been moving in the opposite direction to that which would be required to explain global warming. This means that the world should have been cooling over the past 20 years, if the sun were the cause. It hasn’t, of course - in fact the six hottest years ever recorded have all been within the last 10 years. 

Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, described the paper as: “The final nail in the coffin for people who would like to make the Sun responsible for present global warming.”

The Study was reported in Nature on 5 July and made it to mainstream media on 11 July with this report in one of UK’s national newspapers, The Independent.

With an alleged audience of 2bn and 7 simultaneous concerts around the world, Live Earth created quite a fuss. So we went along to check it out, see if it could really match its hype and hyperbole…certainly, entertainment wise it hit all the spots, an amazing line up with each artist restricted to a ‘best of’ 3-4 songs. The message and all the celebs wheeled out to support it were a little more self conscious as if they didnt want to be the party pooper with the serious message and stop all the fun. Some were almost apologetic about having to real off some fact around the amount of carbon saved by an individual action. Yet it’s important to bear in mind that that Live Earth is just the start, a start of a three year campaign by Al Gore and Live Earth to drive individual action and force an international governmental response. If only 1% of the audience of 2bn, that’s 20m people, took the message to heart over the weekend and start to take concerted individual action, that’s a phenomenal amount of CO2 saved there and then and makes a mockery of those who criticise the concerts for their carbon footprint. A good start, let’s hope they build on it…

OK, we said we’d put some more pics on here from the Aersomsith gig in Hyde Park, so here they are. Our main aim in being there was to spread the word about climate change and to get more people to pledge on the EarthFireIce website. And we also had some fun…

Here’s Sarah - with Trevor and Ed - looking kind of Earthy in her new t-shirt, plus a few more happy t-shirt wearers and a few air tattoos, the money for which went straight into the charity budget for expanding awareness of climate change issues. Thanks to everyone!

Here are a few pics from the Aerosmith gig in Hyde Park at the weekend, where we were spreading the word on climate change… 

EarthFireIce made its first public appearance at the weekend, at the Hyde Park Calling gig in London. Three stages featuring bands such as Aerosmith, Peter Gabriel and Crowded House attracted nearly as much attention as our groovy new octagonal tent. Around 75,000 people attended over the weekend - and we reckon that most of them squeezed into our tent during the torrential rain! We sold t-shirts, tattooed people (OK, air tattoos - we didn’t draw blood!), and generally spread the word about taking personal action against climate change. Thanks to everyone who visited us - and a special thank you to our fantastic team of committed EFI-ers… Sean, Ed, Bee, Trev, Chie, Andy, Ilona, Sue, Robbie, Josh, Irma, and Andy. More pics to appear over the next few days…

Six scientists from some of the leading scientific institutions in the United States have issued a stark warning that the threat of global warming is much greater - and nearer - than the UN’s recent IPCC report has estimated (as if the IPCC report wasn’t bad enough).

In the UK, attention was drawn to the story by Tuesday’s front page lead article in the Independent newspaper. The scientists’ paper, “Climate Change and Trace Gases” was originally published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Some of the more important points raised by the report are that:

* Sea levels rises may be as high as several metres by the end of this century.

* We have only around 10 years in which to implement draconian measures to curb CO2 emissions before we reach the dreaded “tipping point”, beyond which events will be beyond our control.

 * The additional heat from global warming may trigger an “albedo flip” - when the sunlight which is normally reflected by white ice is subsequently absorbed by the dark surface of the open ocean, once the ice has melted.

The researchers, from Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the University of California, Santa Barbera, and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University in New York, were led by James Hansen, the director of the Goddard Institute, who was the first scientist to warn the US Congress about global warming.

This isn’t some trumped up media story, written by a bunch of loony environmentalists with their own agenda. It’s a densely referenced paper from a group of respected scientists who have a real understanding of how we are ruining this planet. And it’s bloody scary.

Yesterday, EarthFireIce made an interesting purchase. We’re teaming up with several summer festivals in the UK you see, to spread the word about individual action on climate change (naturally), and while we’re doing several off-site things such as website link ups, bluetoothing tips to festival goers and the like, we are also having a physical presence at the festivals…in the form of this newly acquired ‘tent’. Now this is seriously the daddy of all tents. It’s mega. It’s big. And we can host our own whole party in there if we choose. Anyway this purchase has triggered frantic scrambling over at EarthFireIce HQ to ensure we have all that we need to pull it off and actually get people to come on over and in. But if you anyone has suggestions for what we should do to entertain the masses at Hyde Park Calling in ten days times, drop me a line. Should we screen climate change videos? Should we make it a giant chill out area? Should we have lots of laptops where people can sign up? Should we paint our bodies green and dance around making strange sounds? I’m sure we’re misssing the killer thing still, so if you have any thoughts, let us know!

What can i say? it was not pretty, it was not gracious, it was certainly athletic and in no way at all did i look like a bloke who had run two extreme marathons. No, when i ran run Battersea Park on Sunday afternoon, 3 miles which represented my first attempt at exercise since the North Pole, i looked like any ordinary unfit person who had not done exercise in a while, had perhaps had a few drinks too many over the weekend, and who really should cut down on their pork life. I spluttered, i coughed, i heaved, i walked, i moaned, i thought to myself ‘why?!?!’, and then i walked some more. How the mighty fall, a mere two months since the marathon in the North Pole (and you can see just how accomplished i was at those here on youtube), and i looked like any ordinary joe. Why cant the human body simply stay fit and keep peak physical shape? hmmm…an error in the design methinks. Bit like the planet perhaps? Hmm..probably best stop the forced analogy there!

As far as I can see, the latest G8 meeting was a complete failure in terms of getting George Bush to take action on global warming. Despite saying that he would seriously consider proposals to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, there’s no commitment to actually do anything. Even more worryingly, he says he won’t do anything unless China does it too. 

How Bush can compare the developed economy of America, where under 5% of the world’s population spew out a quarter of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions, with that of China, is bizarre, to say the least.

Bush points to the fact that China will soon overtake the USA as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. But, duh, that’s hardly surprising George - it’s the world’s biggest country, with a population over four times larger than yours. A fifth of the world’s population live there!

Sure, all countries need to take action to reduce emisions - and that includes developing economies such as that of China. But China’s per capita CO2 emissions are currently less than a third of those in industrialised nations. China’s view is that it’s the developed economies that should take the lead on emissions reductions.

Action from individuals - both to reduce their own emissions and to put pressure on governments to stop this petty squabbling and get on with saving the planet - is now more important than ever.

Today was World Environment Day…apparently. Is it just me or was this somewhat of an underwhelming day? Perhaps my expectations were misaligned, there i was thinking there would be huge fanfare from governments and businesses all jumping on, lots of events, lots of media coverage. Perhaps there was in places, and in certain countries, but not that i saw in the UK. Not even those trusted bastions of environmentalism, the Independent and the Guardian had much to say on it. If i am missing the point , someone let me know…..or perhaps everyone is just too focused on the upcoming G8, which will have far greater reaching consequences in the battle to curb carbon emissions, hopefully postive ones. There’s clearly been a lot of posturing by countries in the lead up to the G8, the US asking for a completely separate negotiating framework outside of the UN (surprise) to be started next year, Germany and the UK insisting a deal be done at the G8. Let’s hope this is just postering and that a deal of substance will be done….the world expects in hope.

Some findings from a poll being conducted by the UK Environment Agency in the run up to World Environment day (which is tomorrow!!):

41% of people surveyed in the UK say they are doing something to tackle climate change.

The remaining 59% of people not taking any action against climate change consists of:

- 37% who say they are not doing anything, and

- 21% who say they don’t know what to do…

Even in a country where global warming is so prevalent in the national press there is clearly still a long way to go to really unleash the power of individuals to make a difference. Again we say get on the EarthFireIce Map and pledge to make a difference. Its free. Its easy and it counts…

As we stood in the wind and rain on monday, stopping random passers by to interview them for our upcoming documentary, a strange realisation came across us….most people get it. in fact almost everyone gets it. (OK, so our sample was not statistically significant but bear with me…) We asked people whether individual action could make any difference against climate change. We asked loaded questions like ’shouldn’t solving climate change be the government’s responsibility?’ We asked ‘are individuals powerless’? We expected many people, at least half, to agree, to say it was governments’ problem to solve, that nothing individuals could do would make a difference. Yet person after person told us all the things individuals should be doing, how everyone’s little bit can count. It was an eye-opener. And it made us think that the problem is not so much willingness as just empowerment - showing people how they can make a difference, telling them what they should be doing. Some companies are starting to take a lead here, but most governments have not yet started this. This is tempered by the fact that this is the UK and climate change enjoys an amazing high media profile unlike the vast majority of other countries, US included, where is rarely registers. But if a couple from Texas who we interviewed got it and talked about what can be done, there is hope!!