It feels a bit weird to be reading about the climate change talks in balmy Cancun when looking out the window at a foot of snow and wearing two pairs of trousers. But the current cold period in the UK, like the freezing winter at the start of the year, is a great illustration of the difference between short term, local weather and the long term global climate patterns which are likely to make 2010 the warmest year on record.
(btw the BBC has a good clip on why the UK is under snow at the minute).
Hopes aren’t high for Cancun – with very little progress has been made since Copenhagen last year and with Obama further weakened by the Tea Party’s gains in the mid term elections. Of course there’s nothing to stop individual countries acting, but my hopes are increasingly with business to bail us out. To the green activist corps this probably sounds like a crazy notion, but, I would ask them, who really controls the global supply chains? Who chooses what we consumers can or cannot buy and at what price? Who develops and commercialises green technologies? Who can act quickly and decisively without fearing electoral backlash? Business, that’s who.