Summary: Cast your mind back five years to 2006, to when environmentalism gripped the world. We were all shocked into buying different lightbulbs by the apocalyptic forecasts of the Stern report, and Al Gore, with the aid of an array of impressive scatter charts, was King Green. It seemed that we were all on course to become bona fide tree huggers. But it hasn’t quite happened – not yet at least – and if anything, the public appetite for the fight against global warming seems to be waning. In the current economic gloom, everyone seems to have reverted to their more immediate priorities; we’re happy to wallow in the reassuring belief that consumption drives growth, as we click “confirm” on another short haul flight. So perhaps we’re now suffering from environmental fatigue, and perhaps we’re fed up with being lectured to by a bunch of lentil-munching cyclists. Have the eco-warriors pushed us too far in their attempt to amend our ways? Have we discovered that, when all is said and done, we’re just not that bothered about rising tides in the Maldives? Of course, there are those who dissent from the consensus that we’re headed towards a catastrophe, and advise us to ignore the people they feel are doom-mongers peddling pseudoscience. How then, should the threat of global warming influence our behaviour? Should we heed the warnings of floods, droughts, burning forests and a world of environmental refugees and change our ways? Or should we maintain that we’re not going to allow the polar bears and our grandchildren to ruin our lives while we rev up our engines and revel in and the pleasures of unabated consumption
