Carbon Neutrality

Given where we're at with concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, I'm not sure this is an issue any of us can afford to be neutral about anymore. Perhaps we should try and make our lives carbon negative, and heal the world (& to continue with Wacko Jacko a while "make it a better place, for you and for me and the entire human race" - which is kind of anthropocentric but what the hey - I can't personally stand most of the man's music, but maybe this message does affect change somewhere in the world).

There is a lot of coverage of environmental issues on UK TV right now, with BBC's Climate Chaos strand in full flow, and last night More4 broadcast an interview with Al Gore at the Hay Literary Festival about global climate change. Unfortunately, I think I overdid it on the horlicks and couldn't make it to the end of the Gore programme (and frankly I guess only the converted would have tuned into something broadcast from 22.40 to 23.45 on a digital channel) but it seemed pretty good, and you did kind of want him to stand again in 2008, and win, and actually bring the USA around.

I hope that all this TV output will increase the number of converts who realise that action is necessary, increase the number of the 'heroic few' who are already acting - changing their own lives, putting pressure on the powers that be to change.

What I am really hoping doesn't happen is that the attention and energy stirred by this media activity is directed into 'green consumerism' or what David Holmgren calls the "Green-Tech stability" route.

I've long had a hang up about the whole idea of carbon credits which I've not been able to accurately articulate - so I was pleased to see the piece Carbon Offsets are a Fraud by Claire Fauset & Merrick, which says all the things I wanted to say and more.

These carbon offsets are popular with your REMs and Coldplays, and Joe Strummer was instrumental in it really taking off, and they'e played a major part in giving respectability to the whole idea. I have a fear that the right on rock musician clique that are engaged with trying to make the world a better place, have been captured by the proximity they can now obtain to politically powerful figures and so do not use their influence for radical enough ends - radical but necessary ends. I know that it is very easy to dis Bono and his ilk on this score (John Pilger and Charlie Brooker have both done it with some style) and I give them credit for their heart action. But we need a rebirth of Orpheus, something I elaborate more on over at Rubedo which is a very different kind of Red.