Iain Macwhirter
I am a great fan of the writing of George Monbiot, the environmental
campaigner, but the Guardian headline on his column made me wince.
“Warning: your festive meal could be more damaging than a long haul flight”.
That’s a prime example of the Christmas catastrophism that afflicts
sections of the press at this time of year. It is, of course, important
that journalists don’t go gooey eyed just because it is Christmas and lose
critical faculties.
But nor should we ignore the extent to which humanity is succeeding in
addressing a lot of intractable problems. Society will only change if
people believe they are capable of change; so we need to recognise and
celebrate achievements.
For example, the most important environmental story in the UK this week,
surely, is not the carbon gasses emitted by Christmas dinner but that half
of Scotland’s electricity is generated by renewable energy. This country is
ahead of schedule to deliver 100 per cent clean electricity by 2020. Of
course, it may not get there, and other climate targets have been missed,
but this is a very important development; as is the commercial availability
of local electricity storage like the Tesla Powerwall home battery. It
sounds boring, doesn’t it? It is just a big battery. But local storage
means that, if you have a windmill on a remote island, you can hold enough
power to run an entire household without being connected to an electricity
grid.
SNIP
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