It has been a notably mild autumn – we were swimming in the Harbour without a wetsuit in mid-November. We are becoming inured to each month being warmer than last year (and the year before and the year before …) and each year being hotter than the year before and the year before …
Environmentalists try not to panic as we approach the point of no return, when the benevolence of the climate irreversibly collapses. There is some good news, days on which more energy is generated by renewables than coal, indeed some days when more is generated by renewables than all other methods combined. But there is bad news too, such as when the world’s largest polluter seems to be adopting the stance that climate change is nothing more than a Chinese hoax.
I was at school when the Royal College of Surgeons announced that smoking caused lung cancer. Half the world, including many doctors, simply did not believe them. The tobacco companies took to employing lobbyists, pointing out how many people they employed and how tobacco taxes supported the economy. We know from the history of philosophical and theological disputes that protagonists seldom change their view, they just die out. I am not sure many smokers changed their view, they just died out (more quickly than normal, as it happens). Are we going through exactly the same process over climate change?
Whether it is the warmth or whatever, and in spite of claimed improvements at the water treatment plant at Gerston, we are still struggling with water quality in the upper Harbour. Red tides have been present all summer in Kingsbridge, Bowcombe, Frogmore and Collapit creeks and, curiously, we seem no nearer understanding why, how toxic they are, or how much they are associated with phosphates. 100 years ago the upper Harbour was bustling with a fishing industry trading in eels and shellfish. Now any of those creatures which are still living are banned from sale as they would be poisonous.
Encouraging news from Sharpness: work on the Egremont is going so well that she should be very smart when she returns to the Harbour in early March, complete with seven en-suite bedrooms, as well as 40 beds for youngsters in completely separate accommodation.
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