Does Anyone Care About Climate Change?

The baffling array of unintelligible buzzwords that escape the lips of PR character Stewart Pearson in The Thick of It draw one of two reactions: pure anger or blank apathy - not dissimilar to the general reactions elicited upon hearing the banal chestnuts: green, sustainable and climate change.

Eyes glaze over; suddenly climate change represents a whole raft of green ideas too frightening to contemplate. A slideshow of images swirl ferociously around your consciousness featuring eco friendly men with dreads snuggled sweatily against naked hippies in unsanitary tree-houses.

Renewable makes you think of those kooky little tyre-fronted notebooks fashioned from a sad Peugeot’s past life, or putting tea bags on the washing line “for another day.”

Then the worst one: climate change, all that guilt-tripping and finger pointing. I wont fork out on an electric car when there are middle class mummies dropping off their little ‘uns in gas guzzling 4x4s with heated leather seats.

The world we live in is threatening enough with the perils of poverty, nuclear power and terrorist attacks, without worrying about the weather as well. We are British, how would we make benign small talk if the weather became one in a long line of issues that gave us the willies?

The World Bank predicts that if emissions of Greenhouse Gases continue as they are the world’s temperature will raise by 4°C. 4°C increase is all very well when you’re sunning yourself in Tenerife, and it would be appreciated while scraping stubborn frost from your windscreen. But 4°C irreversibly for the whole world is all devastating heat waves, food production risks and rising sea-levels rather than a dreamy 4°C when you can’t get out of bed. The results will be catastrophic on a scale we have never seen before.

The problem though, is that climate change is a buzzword for the layman. It doesn’t incite the widespread panic that “war” or “terrorism” does, we don’t have the emotional reaction elicited from “famine” or “poverty.” Obama may have addressed Climate change in his second inaugural address with typically emotive language, arguing that ignoring climate change “would betray our children,” but all too often the human has to see it to believe it. 

While writing in his Telegraph column, Boris Johnson observed anecdotally that January snow made it awfully difficult to imagine that the world is gradually heating up. Many will focus on the narrowed eyes and concerned impression of an impassioned Al Gore on the television while thinking about how he’s aged since that near miss with Bush amongst the confusing myriad of “greenhouse gases” and “scientific evidence” jargon.

Perhaps new terminology is needed; something along the lines of: The-World-is-Heating-Up-Too-Quickly-Due-To-Us-Humans-Unless-We-All-Do-Something-This-Planet-Will-Go-On-But-Everyone-On-It-Will-Die. It needs a bit of work.

Is Man-Made Scampi Weird and Unethical?!

Being a vegetarian is a big part of my life, we all eat three times a day, therefore I make the choice three times a day not to eat meat or fish. At the same time, it isn’t really a defining feature of who I am. I would find it a bit weird if someone introduced themselves as a meat-eater or coeliac or a non-lover of root vegetables.

I take no issue with anyone else eating it, and have tried to avoid that discussion many a time - I am a happy vegetable and an open minded one at that. So when I was wondering around the aisles of my local supermarket, I don't know why I found fish-free scampi any weirder than a veggie “quarter-pounder,” “hot-dog,” or Sunday “roast.”

I had a veggie friend once who told me that she thought that fake meat and fish was unethical, that it perpetuated the myth that we “need” meat or that a meal is incomplete without it. I guess the weird thing is that the shape of it is fashioned to look like the animal it came from. I haven't yet seen Quorn painstakingly moulded into a life-size Sunday roast chicken, but as the industry develops, who can say what will happen? I see tofu sheep in fields and kill your own Quorn cow in Totnes.

Is it unethical really? It’s a good start if you fancy the old “Meat Free Monday” but don’t know where to begin, or if you like meat, but have cholesterol/weight issues, if you’re a vegetarian that craved meat, it could prevent you from actually going back to meat completely, I could go on...

...and we have fake fur and fake leather. Humans are naturally highly resourceful and that it is rather clever to develop in this way - it reduces our reliance on the original animal-based product.

So I had this internal dialogue going on in my head as I stood in the supermarket and my boyfriend (also veggie) eyed the box suspiciously, as if one might actually come to life and wiggle right out. It was such an alien concept I had to try it. At £2.70 it ain’t cheap, but curiosity got the better of me.

It smelt kind of fishy, which wasn't off putting until I wondered how on earth they made it smell like that. It can’t be an altogether natural process surely? But then tons of things I eat and drink are unnatural. I didn't realise until this week that Diet Coke contains phosphoric acid that breaks down bone density after only four cans in a week. (Bone density stops growing at 25, I must stop drinking it soon...) I digress...

From what I can remember about fish, it did taste pretty close; not like when my Grandpa tried a Quorn sausage and made a face like a small child eating a brussel sprout or when you put a drop of fizzy pop in your dogs bowl (not that I've ever done that...). I don’t see the problem with filling your boots with fake scampi if it saves another Nephrops Norvegicus lobster (real name, no word of a lie), and gives it a little longer frolicking in the ocean.