Au revoir or adieu?

Sweet Juliet is still, this last day of 2014, in flower in our garden; and - below - the leaves of the Acanthus near it shine with promise for next Summer. We've sprouts yet to eat, and broccoli, Cumberland cale and rocket. There's even a picking to be made from the lettuce plants, protected only by being at the foot of the wall near the far North corner.

"I foresee the Paris Climate Conference as 2015's key event," I emailed yesterday to the Guardian, "and would like to lend a hand in making it a success. With your front page today containing only three stories, all bad news related to air travel, who will join me in a New Year resolve to give up flying?" Alas, I looked this morning, and it hasn't made it into the paper.

It's a day for resolutions, of which this year I have made several. One relates to this blog, now in its seventh year: have you noticed the posts becoming shorter? Maybe it's the proverbial itch, but I'm putting it to sleep. Perhaps forever. Thank you, if there's anyone out there, for reading it! And to those who may have Commented from time to time.

PS (2nd January 2015): I looked again in the Guardian Letters page yesterday. Still no sign of my letter. Ah well! But then today, a blistering leading article on the importance of the Paris Climate Conference, and in the bottom left corner of the next page - just when I wasn't looking for it - my letter (only slightly edited).

"In wisdom God made all things"

My photograph shows Bishop David Atkinson, of Southwark driving off from Cheltenham this morning after spending the night with us. David was here to talk to Christian Ecology Link yesterday evening: the title of this post is the one he took, leading into a meditation on Psalm 104 ("one of the great nature poems of the world"), used as a backdrop to some sobering reflections upon our present relationship with the created world.

"What is nature but the creation of God," he began; hence his astonishment that a journalist - seeing him at a presentation given by Al Gore some while back - should ask, "What possible interest could the Church have in the environment?"

But it's merely a measure of the general disconnect between our faith and our responsibility to bequeath a better world to future generations. As Professor Mary Grey commented on the Operation Noah Ash Wednesday Declaration: We will encounter [the issues raised by this Declaration] in the form of a question when we face God's judgement: "What did you do to cherish my creation in its hour of danger?"

We cannot continue to exceed the planet's boundaries and expect all humanity to flourish. Realising this means we need to address difficult questions: how are our pension funds invested? Should we fly? Ought we really to light up the church spire? Where is neo-liberal economic theory going?

As was clear from the wide-ranging discussion that followed, all of us can't answer all of these questions, but each of us can tackle some of them. There's a variety of gifts: we can bear the same witness in our different ways. And muddy carrots keep one earthed. What more natural for believers in an infinite God than to live with the understanding that resources are finite! We need to discover the possibility of living differently in a way which is joyous.

Altogether, an excellent evening, which encouraged all of us to follow David's example and accept, in our teaching, preaching and living, the challenge of integrating Christian belief with concern for our world and its future!

No punts in view

In the Parks this morning, the Cherwell had almost overflown onto the Oxford University cricket ground. And the Windrush Valley, below us as we drove home, was flooded worse than I have ever seen it. When will our politician begin to make (and take action upon) the connection between these extraordinary conditions - repeated all round the world - and the climate change we humans are effecting?

Lucas (1)

The papers currently overflow with reports of media idols on trial for sexual offences, so The Hunt was an appropriate choice for the Film Society last night. Members of a small town Danish community hunted down one of their own, Lucas, a likeable kindergarten teacher, following an unhappy pupil's made-up story of his inappropriate behaviour towards her. There's a happy ending, though the scars of the chased/chaste Lucas will remain with him.

This simplifies greatly a complex piece of cinema: director Thomas Vinterberg makes it work well on nearly every level, particularly in terms of suspense - at times quite unbearable. The Lord of the flies came to mind.

I'm still hunting down Gloucestershire churches. Today, Salperton was added to my bag. This gravestone struck me for its uninhibited inscription, commemorating "my beloved husband Bill" (William George Dwight, 1949-2009). It stands to the North-West of the church.

We were walking from the Puesdown Inn, whither the three of us returned very wet. And were then disappointed to find it closed.

Tonight, I've been participating in my first MOOC. "Climate change: challenges and solutions", put on - quite efficiently, it seems to me - by the University of Exeter. Testing for a scientific duffer like me.

Above Sheepscombe

Being deprived by festivities of our last two Wednesday walks, we met at Foston's Ash yesterday morning, to shake away some cobwebs. The mud was our main prospective enemy, because of the terrific rainfall recently. (Our drawing-room alcove ceiling almost gave way: just in time, Edmund drilled holes to channel the water leaking in.)

To avoid the shooting at Climperwell, we walked towards Cranham and then leftwards into the beechwoods above Sheepscombe. Hard core has long been laid on the tracks there, providing a firm path for us as well as the forest machinery. This giraffe-like trunk caught my eye.

Delaying our start till a squall had passed, we then missed any more rain, and indeed the sun lit up the tree tops on our final stretch, through the woods that the late John Workman gave to the National Trust.

That is an organisation evidently not solicitous about its punctuation: "Workmans Wood" on one sign, and "Workman s Wood" on two others. Should one be surprised when one of its top brass sends us a family round robin displaying a similarly cavalier approach to the apostrophe rule?

Oh dear! Bang goes my New Year's resolution - to be less nerdish. It contrasts somewhat in scale with Ian Jack's. Writing in today's Guardian, he says:

New Year resolutions rarely see out February because they're born in a… wishy-washy sort of hope, too weak to resist the seduction of old habits. Fear, on the other hand, keeps you on the straight and narrow… Domesticated ruminants are the largest source of anthropogenic methane and account for 11.6% of greenhouse gases that can be attributed to human activity…The use of highly productive croplands to produce animal feed is [also] questionable on moral grounds because this contributes to exhausting the world's food supply. Other well-known consequences include tropical deforestation and the erosion of biodiversity, but unless governments intervene… it seems unlikely that the demand for animal flesh can be curbed. 

But which popularly elected government will ration meat or deliberately price it as a luxury?… 

Nonetheless, my resolution this year is to become a vegetarian… I doubt that I can stick to it. Where's the terror at three in the morning that will change my behaviour? A gale may be tearing over the house and a flood running down the street, but the link to a lifetime's mince consumption will be hard to fix in my imagination. When it comes to the bleak future of the world, the complicated route between cause and effect is the greatest barrier to our doing much to change it.

Grumpy old men - 2

For one reason or another, we hadn't been to the Film Society recently - till last night. "The Guard" (released in 2011) is Irish noir, laced with good visual jokes. There were jokes in the script too, but many of them passed me by: never have I found the words of an English-language film so difficult to grasp. A strong case for subtitles throughout!

Delivering Christmas cards earlier, I dropped one in at Catherine Shinn. Her father, Catherine said, was at home decorating an absurdly large Christmas tree: "we don't do minimalism," she added - unnecessarily, if you have ever been to her magnificent shop: see my photograph.

I bumped into another of my "by hand" card recipients as she walked homewards with the shopping: recently having flown back from a pilgrimage/holiday in the Holy Land, she justified her failure to send conventional cards this year by a desire to save trees. Really!!

Which brings me onto the great airport debate, raging anew this week - mostly about where extra capacity should be built. The leader in today's Guardian stands alone, reminding readers that roads (and runways) breed traffic. "The old Mr Cameron," it goes on, "warned that If we don't act now, and act quickly, we could face disaster from the climate. That danger has not gone away, and neither have Whitehall's own projections for a 50% rise of aviation emissions by 2050, projections that make a mockery of a supposedly binding commitment to cut 80% out of total greenhouse gases by the same date."

The future of the UK's energy supply: how should the Government secure it?

This was the question for discussion at the annual Univ. London Seminar. Half a dozen Old Members and a Fellow were this evening ranged upon the platform at the Royal Society: all had energy credentials of one sort or another, as did many of those in the packed audience.

Energy investment advisor Jim Long saw the present uncertainty as stemming from a long-term lack of any coherent UK energy policy, combined with our politicians implying that peoples' bills can be kept stable or even go down. This effectively placed the 75% of our capital investment that comes from overseas at risk.

Oliver Phipps of ERM was concerned about the low level of our gas storage: one week's supply, compared to Germany's three months'. But more so, that in less than a decade we had turned from being a net exporter of energy to a serious importer, with 87% based on fossil fuels. We badly needed to accelerate our investment in energy efficiency and renewables.

Gas industry expert, Dr. Jennifer Coolidge saw an immediate threat in the rising cost of our Norwegian supplies, and applauded our renewed commitment to a nuclear component.

Looking long term (the 200-year view), Laurence Fumagalli - who works in the wind power sector - saw all our energy coming from nuclear and solar PV, but over 50 years he foresaw a 30:30:40 mix of nuclear, renewables and gas. In the short term, he thought offshore wind had a big part to play. But overall he was worried about the very high levels of investment that would be needed. Not much of a mention of climate change! The evening's Chair, Professor Gideon Henderson, a College Fellow, specialises in this area, but kept his peace.

The final speaker was the most senior member of the panel, Ron Oxburgh, once Chairman of Shell. Individual governments have little control over energy prices, he said. In particular, fracking in the UK would do nothing much to reduce it, though the Treasury would benefit. He was an advocate of North Sea Interconnectors, to bring hydroelectricity from Scandinavia and thermal energy from Iceland, though in the discussion that followed another Old Member asked why on earth our neighbours would want to share our high price levels.

Mention was belatedly made of the need to bring the demand side into the market, and better energy efficiency (following China's lead) and conservation incentives called for: the Green Deal, though, was thought to be a dead duck. We waste 70% of our electricity generation capacity, said Nick Falk, who spoke up for combined heat and power, pointing to the lead given on this by the Germans and Danes.

Generally coal - though cheap - was given the thumbs down: successful CCS was far away and likely to prove more than twice as expensive as nuclear. Drax's conversion to biomass depended on unsustainable supply. A Severn Barrage? Opinion was sharply divided on this.

The most telling contribution, I felt, came from someone pointing out the deception of carbon reduction targets being based on production, not consumption: the emissions we import are up 20% since 1990, he said. All in all, a better question for discussion would have been, What steps must Government take to manage carbon reduction in a world of uncertain energy futures? I longed to hear some regret for the relative failure of the Warsaw COP 19 Summit (just ended), some attention to the dire warnings of the IPCC 5th Assessment Report - even a mention of Pope Francis' reflection that we all have to think if we can become a little poorer.

I took the photograph earlier in the day walking along Monmouth Street, drawn as usual towards Stanfords for a browse amongst their maps.

Umbrella post

"Climate change and the art of memory" was an opaque title for what turned out to be the stimulating event I attended last evening, at the Literature Festival.

There was more about memory than art though. Mike Hulme - founder of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research - spoke of us being inducted into the weather from an early age. "Who doesn't remember what it was like on their wedding day?" Weather provides the bookends round which we can safely navigate the rest of our lives, he said: an envelope of stability. So, how might we find a way to embrace weather weirding and the jumbling of seasons?

Greg Garrard, eco-critic, asked how we can widen the discussion of climate change from just the scientific. Shouldn't we be talking about human racism, he asked: the assumption that our future matters above all else. Climate change "dramatically impacts upon our culture." He offered the ambiguous role of children: we are saving the planet for them, yet we might be better off not having any. And ignoring the importance of biodiversity will lead our grandchildren into an age of loneliness. The challenge is so enormous, yet there seems so little each of us can do: the challenge is so urgent, yet the effects of climate change will only be felt over the long term. The huge number of people on Earth "dilutes our agency", and by flying everywhere we treat the world's oceans as if they were so many puddles.

I am not familiar with the work of Maggie Gee, the only "artist" who spoke. Her novels, she told us, are about threatened nature. More people read them, possibly, than the IPCC Report, which - though vital - doesn't begin to engage with our human experience. Perhaps, I reflected, there is a parallel with Richard III. Historians are only now beginning to retrieve his reputation, over which so much water (or worse) was poured by Shakespeare. And maybe Jonathon Porritt is onto something with his new fictional autobiography, now out.

For supper afterwards, Caroline had cooked the mushrooms I picked on the walk earlier, St George's and Chanterelle. I photographed - but didn't pick - these huge ones: they looked iffy. But when I looked them up, I see they were edible - Parasols.

Tewkesbury, unjustly neglected

This photograph was taken in the late Peter Healing's garden of tranquility, by the North side of Tewkesbury Abbey. Having discovered it last July, I'll try to return there whenever I'm in Tewkesbury. Old acquaintances staying nearby had invited me to lunch with them yesterday: they told me I had more than repaid their kindness by walking them to this garden. In a month of cornucopia, Creation Time no less, the vine and fig tree are loaded, and berries weigh down the shrubs either side of paths: you hardly think there would be room for them.

On our way there, we stopped to glance down one of Tewkesbury's alleys: there must be upwards of 50 of them. The house on the corner of this particular one belonged to a man known as Cork Legged Packer: he rented it to the eponymous Mrs. Lilley, a widow who ran a china shop.

We said our goodbyes, and seated at the bus stop a pony and trap trotted past. Falling into conversation with a man on a day trip from Pwllheli, I learnt that 95% of its population speak Welsh: he only acquired some English when refugees arrived from Liverpool to escape the Blitz. It made me think of the continuing blitzing of churches in Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, not to mention the mayhem caused in the shopping mall in Nairobi; but it reminded me also to offer a prayer of thanks for at least a measure of peacemaking this week in Syria and with Iran. As well as for the sobering - hopefully eye-opening - new IPCC Report.

Peak oil? No, but...

By chance, I have just caught up with yesterday's BBC HARDtalk interview with Fatih Birol, one of the most influential people on the world energy scene. I wasn't expecting a lot of realism from someone who has spent much of his life defending the oil industry. But his final words were these: "With the current trends, we are perfectly in line for a temperature increase up to six degrees Celsius, which would have devastating effects for all of us, rich, poor, South, North... and if there are no major international agreements very soon, around 2017... we may well lock in our energy infrastructure and... say goodbye to our current lifestyle."

"Myth" busting

My friend Adrian emailed last week. He wanted me to consider writing to the local paper, to respond to a letter headed "Addressing the global warming myth" - printed with no inverted commas round the word myth! He had replied to the same reader's earlier letter on the same theme, and "We must knock this nonsense on the head," said he (quite rightly). So, write I did (for the second time within a month), and today, not only mine, but two other (sensible) letters are published - following on from one yesterday from Kit Braunholtz.

Winter water - 2

I was struck - as I often find myself - by something in the Jesuit, Guy Consolmagno's Tablet column this week: "As the nuns used to tell us about occasions of sin, we are in a situation we should have avoided. Two centuries of dumping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to trouble; as surely as sitting at the bar of a strip club, pretending nothing will happen."

And linked to that, Kumi Naido of Greenpeace International made a strong impression on the World Service's "Hard Talk" recently: towards the end of his interview (at the UN Climate Change Conference in Doha), he said, "Our religious leaders have been deafening in their silence, by not standing up strongly to speak for God's creation." Amen to that.

Finally, this photograph - not unconnected (perhaps): I paused illegally on the hard shoulder of the M5 this morning near Bredon, to take it just where the road crosses the River Avon. (I was on my way to visit Charlotte, having discovered that Upton High Street at least was not flooded.)

Tanglewood

Souvenir de Claudius Denoyel was one of the climbing roses I planted on our boundary wall 15 years ago. As my photograph shows, it needs thinning out. The trouble is, it's grown too tall, even for me, and it's tangled in with the Philadelphus Virginalis. Just another for my long list of Winter gardening jobs.

Today has been mild again, but windy, and there's been more heavy rain at times - more flooding for many, I suspect. In fact there's little good news to be had: the ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinians seems fragile; you have to search to find coverage ahead of the Doha UN Climate Change Conference (COP18), while the BBC still hogs its own headlines. What's more I feel sad for having finished my book: "Merivel" is an enjoyable read, once you've got used to the overdose of Capital Letters; and even that is very much part of its cleverness as a work of imagination. I didn't much enjoy the last Rose Tremain I read, "The Road Home": this latest work exudes more compassion.

"Distilling the frenzy"

Peter Hennessy has recently started writing in The Tablet. Though I have admired various contributions he's made on Radio 4 over the years, I don't find his column quite so must-go-to as (for example) Clifford Longley's.

Hennessy was much in evidence during our thronged literary festival's opening weekend. I liked his self-effacing touch as interviewer with John Cruddas and Tessa Jowell, which produced a worthwhile hour: less successful, however, was his earlier appearance, solo, to promote his latest book: its title as above (referencing Keynes). Never at any festival event have I heard such a litany of quotations by others, or, to put it another way, so many names dropped! If each quote deserves a footnote, then Hennessy has to be right when he confesses, "I'm a footnote person."

He jokingly threatens an autobiography entitled, I've never been one for gossip but... On this evidence, there would be plenty to fill the space after that "but..." - not much scope, though, for substantiating the opening statement. Concentrating on post-War history, he seems obsessed by rumour and the personalities who purvey it. Now that he is a member of the House of Lords - a place for "weapons-grade gossip" - "I have lunch," he boasts, "with my exhibits".

Hennessy sees the role of historians to be that of "natural stay-behinds." They need to look for the "malign combinations" - yet it seemed he sees nothing to which we should be alerted in our leaders of recent decades neglecting to husband resources or tackle long-term environmental threats: "climate change" rates just one brief mention in Distilling the frenzy, according to its index.

"I'm a media tart," he said: at least he's honest enough to admit it.

Mark Letcher's Cheltenham visit

We had a reasonable turnout for our Christian Ecology Link meeting last evening. The 30 or so who came were rewarded by a thought-provoking talk: it was followed by a good discussion.

Mark Letcher has been promoting sustainable energy for nearly two decades: his Bristol consultancy, Climate Works, helps organisations reduce their carbon footprint - but he didn't come to plug that. Instead, he spoke about his involvement with Operation Noah, an independent charity founded by Christian Ecology Link 11 years ago - the first Christian campaign to focus upon the need to address climate change.

We will all remember 2012, Mark said, for its Summer of sport - but it has also been (to use Churchill's phrase) "a period of consequences". Illustrative of many disconcerting, but largely under-reported, events is the steep reduction in Arctic Summer sea ice.

How can we, Mark asked, accept these climate events, and merely prepare to adapt to them? It's not just the prospect of six degrees of warming, but the effect of rapid acidification of the oceans, a world population of maybe 10 billion in 70 years, and an eagerness (not to say a demand) on behalf of most of the have-littles to consume as much as we - or worse, the Americans - now do, and that in the near future. "This just doesn't stack up!"

Successive Governments have adopted policies that are letting the environment run down: what an outcry there would be were a political party to set out in its manifesto, "We intend to let the Health Service run down"!

Mark went on to say that what we face is not only a rape of the resources of the natural world, but "an unmitigated assault upon the poor." Is it reasonable, he asked, that the poorest should carry the biggest burden when they have contributed least to the problem? This is surely the real challenge for Christians.

Why is it so difficult to talk to others about climate change? If it doesn't frighten, then it can shame them - and inducing neither reaction is effective to alter a person's frame of mind.

In the past, we were prepared to make sacrifices for future generations: our parents and grandparents suffered the deprivations of wartime; and went on to accept the concept of "greenbelt" to safeguard our countryside. However, now we seem to be saying that we have the right to live as we are living, even though we know it's at the expense of future generations. Is the future we are being offered the one we want for our grandchildren? If not, then there's an urgent need to talk, to coordinate and to challenge politically.

We face a profound crisis affecting our values and our faith, as well as our relationship with the natural world. But the other side of the coin is that it's also an opportunity for an alternative vision. Something like that set out in David Atkinson's "Renewing the face of the earth." Something too like that Ellen MacArthur, for instance, has recognised in setting up her foundation. "What's missing at present is all of our voices: our eyes are closed, and we have fingers in our ears."

"Better ways of talking about climate change"

This is the title of our forthcoming Christian Ecology Link meeting, this coming Friday here in Cheltenham. The poster photograph (above) is captioned, Will we be seeing palm trees in Cheltenham’s Promenade before too long?. I took it in Seville when we went there a couple of years ago.

All the details have been widely circulated, and we hope for a good turnout - Mark Letcher speaks well and authoritatively, being the director of the Bristol-based sustainable energy consultancy, Climate Works.

Water aid

Our water comes from the Welsh hills, and is plentiful. Nevertheless, with all the information to hand about the effects of climate change in different parts of the world, I've always had a nagging worry about our use of it unmetered. Mark was the man who came this morning to rectify that. It took him all of 15 minutes.

I have to admit that the decision to instal a meter was not entirely governed by a wish to show solidarity with those who have to carry it for miles upon their heads. I rang Severn-Trent last week to query a bill that had come through, and the quick-witted person I spoke to showed how metering might actually be cheaper - and anyway we could have a year's trial. Good marketing.

The Durban platform

Two items have dominated the news this weekend: in Europe, our Prime Minister reached for the unilateral opt-out (surely a better description than "the veto"); whilst in South Africa some sort of legally-binding climate treaty looks now to be on the cards - thanks largely to the EU's climate chief (Connie Hedegaard)'s efforts. (What better illustration do you require Mr. Cameron, of the importance of us playing a full part in Europe?)

Both events will impinge far more upon a four-year-old than on someone of my age, but so far from this being the public perception, all we hear are Hooray Henrys on the Tory right apparently regardless of the significance of the Durban roadmap: it may only be a mouse, where a lion-sized compact for humanity's future is required, but it's better than nothing.

"Hope for Creation"?

Two years ago, we were all getting very excited in the run-up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at Copenhagen. Its perceived failure was a big disappointment. Now, we are barely three weeks away from the start of this year's equivalent COP - 17 - to be held in Durban: nobody seems to be holding their breath, but that doesn't mean to say people shouldn't be praying for a positive outcome this time round. And that's the purpose of Hope for Creation, a day of prayer - today - for action on climate change: Christians in 60 countries around the world have signed up.

Right on cue, I read yesterday of both good news and bad news: the latter first - a record rise in greenhouse gas emissions is reported, putting global warming ahead of the worst-case scenarios envisaged by scientists.

And the good news? China's lightbulb moment. Incandescent bulbs are being phased out in the Peoples' Republic over a five-year period, which is more than the US is committed to.

I photographed this fennel head just over a week ago: it has self-seeded in amongst the carrots.

"Earthquakes in London"

The joint National Theatre/Headlong production of Mike Bartlett’s 2010 South Bank success is now on tour: we drove to Malvern this evening to catch it, suckers for anything to do with climate change. Rupert Goold’s energetic direction does wonders for what is ultimately not a very profound play. But it is rich entertainment, and may I suppose end up by preaching to others than the converted. At the interval, I found myself thinking of the dysfunctional family and its hangers on in terms of Chekhov somewhat speeded up. The ending however disappoints, resolving itself into sci fi fantasy. A guess at what might be the truth, Cormac McCarthy-like, would of course be far too painful for the punters. Bumping into friends there, we somehow sought to avoid any discussion of the substance of the play.