God The Scapegoat

Returning from a holiday where the blazing sun was melting and terraforming the pavement underfoot, it was a bizarre feeling to be told that our flight was delayed because Heathrow’s main runaway was in danger of becoming riverbed to a shoal of marine animals. Very well, I’m embellishing a little, but to be informed of such apocalyptic flooding in 35 degree heat just didn’t feel quite right.

In 1953, meteorologists were consulted at length by those orchestrating the coronation of Elizabeth II. The general consensus was that, from previous meticulous record-keeping and that year’s trends, 2nd June was the best time for the big day. Let’s just say that it was a good job Lizzy’s crowning was an indoor event.

For those not familiar with the British fixation with weather, I only hope you can understand that our temperate climate is prone to throw up the most dramatic and bizarre weather possible. Sure, folks across the pond will report of hailstones in Maryland, mudslides in San Francisco and a dozen tornadoes in between. But you know what to expect there. As folk who are frankly unsure what the weather’s going to hurl down at us, we feel the need to comment on it ad nauseum.

This year, flooding on the business end of the River Severn and the western area of the Thames has had anyone clutching a microphone with cameraman in tow scrambling for soundbites of despair from the poor folks whose homes have just been wrecked. Some reporters even got so close to the water it seemed as though one quick plunge and they’d be ably breast-stroking their way to their next story.

Still, far be it from me to go off and lambaste the media. This article is all about blamelessness.

Another fixation in this country is to always find blame for someone or something when it all goes to pot. The best example of our fascination for a hate figure is every other summer, when English national football team are either dumped out of the European Championships under dubious circumstances, or dumped out of the World Cup under utterly diabolical circumstances. Be it a crucial refereeing blunder, a bolus of players unable to handle the pressure of a penalty shootout or a striker getting himself needlessly sent off for stamping on opposition testicles, we’ve got the lot.

Still, this year there’s no major football, so we’ve got something else to find blame for. Problem is, when its Acts of God we’re talking about, how can we shake our fists at the Almighty? Noah certainly didn’t, he just nodded politely and built the Ark. I don’t mean to get tangled up in to a pseudo-religious rant, it’s just rather humorous to observe so many people getting extremely agitated, trying to blame the lack of the Azores High squarely on the shoulders of any politician who dares to don a pair of Wellingtons.

So who’s the big winner? Well our new PM must be pretty pleased with himself – his first national crisis he could do nothing to prevent. David Cameron’s been caught out in Africa, rather unfortunate timing with Commons currently in recess. Meanwhile, the biggest winner has to be August – never has this month when we usually pin our hopes on good weather carried so much expectation. As I post article this with just minutes of July left, it’s safe to say optimism never felt so good.

Jamie Shoesmith is currently away.

Live Earth - Greener Than Green?

Bounding down the stairs on Christmas Day at five years old trying to catch Father Christmas doing his business right in the middle of the living room under tree, I rounded the corner only to find he’d already been. Fortunately, I’d been a good boy that particular year, and sitting there was a brand spanking new Amiga 500+ rather than anything unpleasant.

Joining the state-of-the-art computer system (well, it was at the time) was a box containing a rather sought-after video game. Straight from the cartoon was the platform game, to give it its full name: Captain Planet® and the Planeteers™ by Mindscape Games. Environmentalism, back then, had a rather corporate edge.

So inspired was I by Wheeler, Kwame, Linka, Gi and Ma-ti’s heroics in saving the planet, I had the back pages of the instruction manual photocopied, which contained ten eco-friendly tips to help save the planet. A poorly-drawn poster later and the word was out; I’d send anyone who gave a damn about our Earth a copy if they provided a stamped-addressed envelope. One person replied. Still, I think I managed to get through to him, and that I’d done my bit for the environment. I threw the other 19 unused copies in the bin and thought no more of it.

In a similar fashion to the above anecdote, Live Earth's resulting fallout is a confusing lot. Intentions were unclear from the outset; sound bites on Radio 1’s Newsbeat bulletin had many of the US acts struggling to explain what, in fact, climate change actually is.

More to the point, many of these acts were indeed being ferried to their respective stages about by means that were, to put it bluntly, taking rather a large dumped on our o-zone layer. Razorlight appear to be the worst offenders, who went to great troubles to get very enthuse the message in to their art well before their set at Wembley, only for the band to realise they were due to play a gig in Scotland on the same evening. How did they get there? No prizes for guessing. The Planeteers would be spinning in their bio-degradeable graves.

With detractors pointing out that 90% reduction in carbon emissions is pretty much unfeasible, what exactly was the point of Live Earth? That statistic, which may seem like a load of hot air (sorry), was the ‘big picture’. Problem is, it didn’t serve as a call to action to anyone. America won’t bow to such an outlandish idea in the meantime. China has just emerged as a key player in climate change; how to take them on is still a grey area.

Sorry to sound so negative – it’s just things don’t quite add up.

Live8 had a tremendous pressure point aimed directly at Gleneagles, and without it ever taking place, the summit would’ve probably harked back to the days when it was no more than a fireside chat instead of exactly how much each country could pledge to make poverty history.

Even Captain Planet had more of a point to it – do what you can, personally, to reduce waste and leave the planet as you’d expect to find it. That seems to be the soft undertone of Live Earth, but to many (including the 1% populace of the USA who actually tuned in) the message may well be sadly dwarfed by those picking apart the logistics of saving the world.