Onegin and much champagne

Sadly, this was one I took last year! On Thursday at Glyndebourne, it was a cold and rather damp evening for Eugene Onegin. But not on stage: what a production! And an unforgettable Letter Scene. Thanks to our most generous hosts, we cannot believe our good fortune in catching it.

Nonetheless. I reported last week 's Science Festival reflection that we have not yet had our Pearl Harbour moment when it comes to climate change: in the Guardian, also on Thursday, Mark Lynas writes: "If current [climate] policy continues to fail... then 50% to 80% of all species on earth could be driven to extinction... and much of the planet's surface left uninhabitable to humans."

So, what becomes of Glyndebourne? Are they fiddling whilst Rome burns? The usual magnificent programme book proclaims carbon-neutrality. In his Foreword, Executive Chairman Gus Christie mentions "our on-going aspirations to reduce our CO2 emissions". If an application to put a wind turbine on nearby Mill Plain is granted, it will reduce operational carbon emissions by around 70%, he writes - but 74% of Glyndebourne's carbon footprint is down to audience travel.

So, will we fix it by all piling into the train? What about the food miles, and all that champagne? "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" Sir Toby Belch's rhetorical jibe becomes a real question when (as Lynas says) "no politically plausible scenario we could envisage will now keep the world below the danger threshold of two degrees."

Sustainable world?

Besides the sessions on photography and population, mentioned in preceding posts, we attended a number of other Cheltenham Science Festival events - and my back has yet to recover from those agonizing chairs. By the time Stephen Pinker and Anthony Grayling embarked on a discussion of what language reveals about ourselves, I had had enough. On a sunny Sunday afternoon in June, there were better things to be doing than sitting in a tent in the dark with the air conditioning whirring.

My concentration had begun to stray earlier yesterday during a survey of the technological fixes available to counter the effect of climate change. (The distinguished panel of three wise men was unanimous in giving this approach the thumbs down.)

However, two talks by the recently-appointed and the recently-retired Chief Scientific Advisors to the Government, David King and John Beddington, impressed hugely in their rather different ways. David King side-stepped the nuclear issue, on which he is famously bullish: John Beddington, speaking with tempered optimism in spite of recent food price rises, advocated smart interventions on the supply side (in the words of Jonathon Porritt's summing up). "You are a conucopian!" "Well, I'm certainly not a Utopian," John Beddington responded.

At another point during the Festival, Jonathon observed that we still need our “Pearl Harbour” moment on climate change. After the Japanese attack on the US base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, in December 1941, President Roosevelt talked about there now being “only one reality, namely winning this war.” The result? Within nine months, 80% of the US’s industrial capacity was being used for weapons manufacture.

Just as impressive as any of these events was a fringe talk given by botanist Ghillean Prance at the University of Gloucestershire. He urged his predominantly Christian audience - the meeting was convened by the Rector of Cheltenham, Andrew Dow - to wake up to the environment. Christians tended to see their duty as converting others and involving themselves in social issues, but not caring for God's creation. The speaker's unaffected modesty and his patient and direct handling of a wide variety of questions impressed everyone. What a pity space could not be found for a lecture as good as this in the main Science Festival programme!