Editorial

“Well, here's another fine mess you've gotten us into,” as Oliver Hardy actually never quite said to Stanley Laurel.

Yes, here we are, facing a climate crisis that our planet-threatening carbon technologies have been cooking up for many a decade past. The latest scientific opinion makes no bones about the gravity of our predicament, as set out in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [‘Adapt or die?’]. The need to adapt is inescapable, it says. Meanwhile, what could be higher on the political agenda than getting us all to change our behaviour, to stop adding more to the greenhouse problem than we already have?

 

Or is there another way out? Can technology save us? Our cover feature [‘The scrubbers, the sulphates and the sunshield solution’] looks with shock and awe at the ambitious ideas being advanced on the wilder shores of science to techno-fix the causes of global warming, or strike a daring countervailing blow against its effects.

 

Back here on planet Earth, more sober-suited environmentalists (if the likes of Jonathon Porritt can be so described) see more future in efforts to engage our responsibility. Both that of government [‘Could do better - much better’] and of the governed - or rather, as Porritt might put it, those in the ungoverned grip of the pernicious cult of consumerism [‘Quips’].

 

To consume, or not to consume? Is that the question?

 

When Julia Hailes evokes our power, as consumers, to drive change for the better [‘What's in your wallet?’], she means more than merely sending sellers the feedback messages that marketing departments sift ever more effectively from the ever-growing global data mountain. When we vote with our wallets, as she points out, we’re also giving our politicians some pretty useful pointers towards the kind of policies we’d be prepared to support with our votes. Mind you, she does have form on this subject; she co-authored, back in 1990, the phenomenally successful first Green Consumer Guide, and thus helped shape the buying behaviour of that generation’s shoppers-for-change. This time, though, it’s bigger…

 

We’re doing our bit, too, to guide the consumer in you, as our regular ‘Ten green bottles ’ feature tackles what’s in the bottles. And even lifelong vegetarians will surely appreciate the message at the root of ‘Lamb in full flower’, about the all-round benefits of food produced with love and care for its own distinctive environment.

A NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS

From the next issue of Green Futures, we are going over to a quarterly frequency for the print edition. Conversely, the ever-growing number of readers who already see us first as an online publication can start appreciating the much more frequent updating of our website (www.greenfutures.org.uk), ahead of a planned relaunch in the autumn. We’ll be aiming (of course) to give you the best of both worlds. Now there’s a phrase strangely suited to the conflicted state of ‘one planet’ awareness...

 

Roger East

7 May 2007

Roger East