- Deep below the grassy banks of the River Don, canaries
would warn of impending catastrophe. Now that the mineshafts are empty
and the birds have gone it can seem the entire kingdom of nature is alerting
us to imminent catastrophe. Amid this corner of South Yorkshire, slag heaps
and scraps of woodland struggle for space with sprawling rubbish tips alongside
the brackish ebb of one of the most polluted waterways in Britain.
-
- A few miles down the Don, close to the centre of England,
marks the point where Britain's green dream died. Here, opposite the village
of Conisborough, lies the world's first environmental theme park. The Earth
Centre was meant to inspire us to a cleaner lifestyle. Almost £60m
of public money was lavished on the idea that the British public would
embrace sustainable development, a way of living that would guarantee future
generations do not inherit a broken planet. Eventually, however, the ideology
behind Britain's first landmark millennium attraction became unsustainable.
The truth is we never really cared.
-
- Maybe the Earth Centre was ahead of its time, too esoteric
for a society used to the here-and-now. Yet those whose life is devoted
to researching the fate of our polluted, populous planet felt its message
arrived, if anything, too late. During the five years since the centre
wooed us with its imperative for change, the planet's health has steadily
deteriorated. Man has embarked on the greatest extinction of species since
the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago; the great forests are dying;
the deepest oceans are haemorrhaging life at a rate almost unimaginable
a decade ago; while the highest peaks have shed their shawl of snow for
the first time since the last Ice Age. And every day man-made poisons leach
into the ground, our water and bodies. No one knows where we are heading.
All that seems certain is that the face of our island, disfigured beyond
recognition in a few centuries, will change at a rate faster than history
can predict.
-
- The portents are ominous. Less than two per cent of the
UK remains cloaked in ancient forests - 15 times less land than that coated
beneath concrete. We have become one of the least-wild countries in Europe,
but few seem to mind. Perhaps the concept of climate change and evaporating
ice shelves will always remain too abstract for most Britons to comprehend.
By contrast, the Dutch and Germans travelled hundreds of miles in their
droves to the Earth Centre, until the attraction closed down. Unlike many
who live close by, they never doubted ministers who once hailed the project
every bit as significant as the Millennium Dome.
-
- Brutalised by the complexities of balancing economic
competitiveness and the needs of nature, South Yorkshire remains among
the most polluted patches of Britain. Long after the Industrial Revolution,
two-thirds of all cancer-causing chemicals spewed into our skies are being
belched from factories found in the most deprived 10 per cent of communities.
-
- It has fallen to Eton-educated Jonathon Porritt to persuade
us of the virtues of a sustainable lifestyle. Porritt is the man picked
by Tony Blair to succeed where the Earth Centre failed, finished off, ironically,
by the rainfall last August, Yorkshire's wettest on record. From his Gloucestershire
headquarters, the chairman of the government's Sustainable Development
Commission is phlegmatic about the task. 'It is not an easy message to
get across, but essential. We need to live in a less damaging way, but
raising awareness can be a slow, painful process.'
-
- Tony Upton spends most Sunday mornings scrubbing his
Peugeot 406. It is more out of pride than necessity: the gleaming metallic-green
paintwork parked on the driveway of Doncaster's Stonecross Gardens - four
miles from the Earth Centre - could only belong to a new vehicle. It is
almost the same model as the old family car, last seen by the nation bobbing
down the ripped-out heart of the Cornish village of Boscastle. Viewers
missed the 59-year-old yanking his son from the family car moments before
it was dragged face-down towards the Atlantic. They similarly missed the
hours of ferocious rain that engorged Cornwall's rivers to an impossible
fatness. Until then Upton thought he had seen flooding. After all, the
River Don, like most these days, is more prone to bursting its banks. The
millions who gawped at the images of 'Dinky' cars tossed downstream through
a quaint English tourist town knew something terrible had gone wrong.
-
- Yet the government's advisers shared only a muted sense
of awe: they had been waiting for something like Boscastle for some time.
Mention climate change to John Schellnhuber and his features, browned from
a never-ending global tour witnessing the latest twist of nature, crease
with anxiety. He is research director of the Tyndall Centre, where Britain's
most eminent scientists chart the latest erratic meteorological episode.
'This is only the start; we need to raise the reality that we are heading
into danger. Things could get grim for us all,' says the 54-year-old physicist.
-
- Precisely a month after Boscastle, the Earth Centre,
which had been preaching the threat of climate change to its underwhelmed
public, closed down. Just when the nation demanded an explanation to the
extraordinary events of 16 August, its message had been vanquished. Less
than 48 hours after the Doncaster centre bolted its doors, Tony Blair received
a final briefing from his chief scientific advisers. For a prime minister
dogged by the need to find weapons of mass destruction, one had landed
on his doorstep. The following day he announced a new industrial revolution,
founded on sustainability. But Blair was not telling the whole story. If
he had done so, Chancellor Gordon Brown's prudent book-keeping for a new
economy might have been destined for a recyclable paper bin before he even
began. Calculations by Schellnhuber suggest climate change could 'bankrupt
Britain'. Insurers Munich Re believe that, by 2060, the cost of our changing
weather will outstrip the total value of commodities and services produced
by the global economy. Documents by United Nations officials completed
in mid-October reveal that the number of people in the world struck by
natural disasters has doubled over the past decade. Economic losses have
more than trebled.
-
- At almost the precise point the Earth Centre conceded
nobody was interested, nature unleashed a sequence of global calamities.
Four violent hurricanes took turns to batter Florida and the Caribbean;
Bangladesh reeled from the most ferocious flooding in recent years; even
the great glaciers of the Tibetan Plateau, spanning a quarter of China's
giant landmass, were found melting at a rate that would make survival this
century a miracle. The most extreme temperature increase the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change predicts is 5.8C this century. It may sound modest
- we've all wallowed in 30C and, like Schellnhuber, got the tan to prove
it. Yet an increase of half that would be enough for the ice sheets that
encase Greenland to begin melting faster than they can be replaced, threatening
a rise in sea level that could inundate much of south and eastern England;
the recognisable lifestyles of millions depend on such distant waters remaining
exactly where they are. Such scenarios convince Sir David King, the government's
chief scientist, that global warming not only poses a threat greater than
global terrorism, it is the biggest obstacle facing civilisation for 5,000
years.
-
- Bjorn Lomborg offers a rather different assessment. The
Danish statistician, whose book The Skeptical Environmentalist provoked
outrage by daring to doubt climate change or in fact that the planet was
in a poor state, has grown increasingly influential. Tackling HIV, the
planet's chronic water shortages and unfair trade issues should take priority
over a threat that is inherently long-term, he argues. His questioning
of the risk of global warming is now on school curricula and governments
call him for advice. Russia is not known to have sought Lomborg's views
before ratifying the Kyoto protocol, the international treaty to reduce
climate change gases. The move made Vladimir Putin an unlikely ecological
saviour and saved the treaty from imminent collapse. Yet the planet's biggest
polluter, the US, remains a seeming advocate of Lomborg's with its refusal
to come on board. A previously unpublished map drawn up by Schellnhuber,
to persuade the US to take climate change seriously, revealed that a sizeable
chunk of Yorkshire could vanish in just over 50 years.
-
- Millions along the coast from Hull to Norwich to Colchester
to Southend-on-Sea, as well as the capital itself, could find themselves
underwater. 'Britain's power came from the coastline and provided the ability
to trade and defend itself against enemies. But now the sea could turn
into a curse, its wonderful coastline is posing major problems,' says Schellnhuber.
-
- So, too, the nation's once enviable infrastructure: London
cannot cope with new-style monsoon showers and, for that reason, the Thames
could upstage the Don as one of our most polluted rivers. Outrage greeted
the 600,000 tonnes of excrement that slipped into the famous waterway in
west London after the capital's sewers were overrun during one violent
downpour, yet new figures reveal that since April an amount of untreated
sewage enough to fill the Royal Albert Hall 120 times over has flowed into
the Thames. And now 95.5 per cent of our rivers are in danger of failing
new targets on pesticide poisoning and the destruction of endangered wetland
habitats.
-
- Across the capital, concern is being focused on the glinting
metal barrier that safeguards the city from destruction. When the Thames
Barrier opened just over 20 years ago it was closed three times that year.
In 2003 this rose to a record 19 shutdowns. Soon it will offer no protection.
On either side of the barrier are rolling fields which, for centuries,
have remained unsettled for fear of being swept away. Yet amid warnings
that flooding can only worsen, these vast flats that lie beneath high-tide
level are the government's chosen site for tens of thousands of homes.
-
- For some, the failure of the Earth Centre lent credence
to the claims of woolly thinking that has blunted the ideology of Britain's
environmental movement. It is an accusation repeated as the Greens face
their greatest conundrum at a time when the earth contemplates its gravest
threat.
-
- If climate change is man-made, then reducing carbon-dioxide
emissions becomes imperative. However, powering Britain in a manner that
preserves our largely cosseted lifestyles without imperilling the planet
is not that simple. The one proven source of electricity that does not
exacerbate climate change is the enduring nemesis of the green ideal: nuclear
power. Yet the reality is that Blair's green revolution is stuttering:
less than three per cent of our electricity comes from the wind, sun and
sea. In addition, Britain's main supply of electricity will soon expire,
the North Sea's once-plentiful reserves of gas effectively drained in little
more than a decade.
-
- For their part, the dirty power stations that drove the
Industrial Revolution are no longer tenable; their predilection for coal
is what brought Britain to the brink of climate change in the first place.
And so a fading nuclear vision, punctured by persistent safety and financial
concerns, suddenly burns bright again. For many environmentalists such
a move is anathema. Some of the Greens' greatest heroes have risked accusations
of betrayal. James Lovelock, who coined the Gaia hypothesis, the notion
that earth is sustained by the actions of living things, is among those
delighting the still-mighty lobbying arms of the nuclear empire. Lovelock
has urged his traditional allies to 'drop their wrongheaded objection to
nuclear energy'. Yet Zac Goldsmith, the 29-year-old editor of The Ecologist,
is among those unimpressed, believing the nuclear trade is punching hard
from its deathbed. Goldsmith says Blair's energy policies have tormented
him. 'The government needs to expand his pitiful renewable energy programme
and implement a massive programme of energy conservation. Any less would
be frightening.'
-
- At first glance, the piercing turquoise water looks perfect
for a quick dip. But this pool is like no other on earth. Water may be
the most basic component of life, but this shimmering pond can only offer
a protracted fate. Compound B30, hidden way beneath the rust-streaked towers
of Sellafield, is among the most radioactive places on the planet and,
increasingly, the site that could derail plans for another era of nuclear
power plants. Nestled at its foot is a thick sludge of around 400kg of
plutonium, enough for 50 atomic bombs, though even its owners admit to
not knowing exactly how much stuff is down there. EU inspectors have been
refused full access to B30, prompting unprecedented legal action by Europe
over its alleged instability. Should members of al-Qaeda ever find themselves
staring into its blue-green depths, such fears would seem academic. If
the Cumbrian complex were successfully attacked, Chernobyl would become
a mere footnote, according to a British Defence Committee report over the
summer.
-
- Even without the aid of terrorism, Sellafield's plutonium
has somehow contaminated children's teeth across Britain, but to what end
remains a mystery. Only last month, government advisers admitted they did
not understand the potential health effects of radioactive pollution on
youngsters. More established are the impacts of the huge power stations
that smother Britain. For years children on the M1 have gazed at West Retford,
the prehistoric clump of cones a few miles south of Doncaster. The smoking
summits of these ancient coal-burning power stations cough out particles
linked to cancer, asthma and respiratory diseases that, even without climate
change, would see them phased out. As it is, the world's first industrialised
nation has more than five million people with asthma, the worst in Europe.
The highest death rates from diseases related to air quality such as bronchitis
and emphysema are found in Doncaster.
-
- Ten minutes' drive from Doncaster, amid the sparse fields
and windblown hedges of South Yorkshire, close to the village of Finningley,
lies an old RAF station. Close by, ancient oak trees shed yellowing leaves
upon scavenging squirrels; a magpie swoops overhead. The solitude is shattered
by the groan of a heavy truck, then another, until the skyline is fractured
by a massive metal and glass frame. This is Britain's first new international
airport for 30 years. By next spring, the £80m project will have
begun sating the dreams of 2.3 million holidaymakers a year. It has been
named after Robin Hood, the folk hero who revered the lush woodlands of
rural Britain.
-
- Aviation is now considered one of the most serious environmental
threats facing the world, accounting for the biggest increase of climate-change
gases in Britain. Soon the Uptons will be able to boycott Boscastle in
favour of Bologna, but their three-hour flight will churn out more polluting
gases than the average motorist in a year. Blair, though, remains committed
to a massive expansion of airport capacity, while imposing no tax on aircraft
fuel. There is mounting unease among officials over such a glaring conflict
with targets to reduce greenhouse gases. Appointed by the Queen to advise
parliament, Sir Tom Blundell, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental
Pollution, widely considered Britain's leading environmental think-tank,
despairs when the issue of air travel is brought up. For the 62-year-old,
it is symptomatic of a failure to engage Britain with the environment.
'This expansion of civilian aviation is highly questionable in the context
of climate change. We were once seen as the dirty man of Europe, but we
still need a change in culture. Even the way we think has to change.'
-
- Attempts to cover up the escalation in climate-changing
gases from air travel following pressure from the Department of Transport
highlight the government's internal embarrassment. New figures show that
Britain's carbon-dioxide emissions are 30 per cent higher than the government
has previously admitted. Ministers had again selected to eradicate aviation
from their calculations. Motorists are similarly being encouraged to carry
on as normal despite the fact that carbon-dioxide emissions from Britain's
clogged roads are expected to rise 14 per cent between 2000 and 2010. Since
this government came to power, the principal climate-change gases have
increased. If the proposed wind farms around Thorne Moor, on the outskirts
of Doncaster, were approved it might help matters. But, even though they
fret over global warming, local conservationists do not want them. A recent
Mori Poll found that 18- to 24-year-olds are the least likely to worry
about green issues, creating the irony that the moment Blair implores the
need for environmental thinking, saving the planet has never seemed less
cool. Maybe the movement has moved too mainstream, become too middle aged,
too middle class.
-
- Matthew Dennys is like most other young teenagers. Not
only for his obsession with football and computer games, but because his
young body contains 32 toxic industrial chemicals. Some were banned a decade
before he was born. The blood of Britain's youth is swirling with chemicals
that mimic the female sex-hormone oestrogen and which are used in everyday
items including furniture and appliances like the computer-game consoles
that Dennys loves. In his short life, the Man United fan from Middleton
has accumulated higher levels of everyday brominated flame retardants than
his parents or grandmother.
-
- When introduced in the 1930s, these chemicals were meant
to revolutionise our lives. Dennys is an unwitting guinea pig in an accidental
experiment that threatens to dismantle the evolutionary process that has
existed for 3.5 billion years. Male infertility is rising, a low sex drive
among men is increasingly prevalent, and sperm counts have halved in Britain
over the past 50 years. Mother nature is taking over. Those studying the
phenomenon believe it could become the public-health scandal of our times.
Blundell, a leading biochemist, suggests available evidence, combined with
the repeated failure to ban such substances, makes chemical contamination
the next 'tobacco'.
-
- Yet it is in a British backwater, within the murky flow
of the River Aire that winds through the same floodplain as the Don, that
the most compelling evidence exists that something strange is rippling
throughout the realm of nature. Below the surface, all male fish studied
by government scientists were changing sex; ovaries were found within their
testes, while their genitals were vastly reduced.
-
- Contraceptive pills washed through the sewage system
and industrial toxins were blamed. More worrying is that the latest research
reveals that the effect of hormone-mimicking chemicals has started clambering
up the food chain. Seals, dolphins, otters, falcons and bees are among
those suspected of embarking on a unisex existence that can only lead to
extinction. Without any safety data for many of the substances linked to
such an outcome, Blundell says we may have triggered 'a giant experiment'
with both ourselves and nature.
-
- There are no more holes left to fill. Just when we craved
more, our crowded island has run out of space to discard the detritus of
a throwaway society characterised by flapping pizza boxes and crinkled
plastic bottles. Now, after new regulations demand dumping should be replaced
by recycling, Britain's love affair with the rubbish tip is over. Breaking
the habits of a lifetime will not be easy. Dennys, like the rest of us,
throws out his own body weight in waste every two months. Yet Manchester,
the metropolis on his doorstep, recycles just two per cent of household
waste, compared to more than half of those from the countries that so loved
the Earth Centre. They are shamed further by towns like Daventry in Northamptonshire,
which boasts a national best of 44 per cent. In Doncaster itself, slightly
less than the national average is recycled - 14.5 per cent - and the town
has already admitted it will not be hitting next year's government target
of a quarter.
-
- However, in spite of or maybe because of this, life expectancy
has increased, and most of us have never had a better standard of living.
Progress, however, is always destined to yield new threats and, for his
part, Blair has less than two months to put his 'green house' in order.
Last month he promised to use the UK's presidency of the G8 group of leading
industrial nations to combat the 'catastrophic consequences' of climate
change. Only time will tell if it is a pledge he can deliver on.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004 http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1345646,00.html
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