Climate change and fear.

There are some excellent campaigners, in environmental issues. Unfortunately there are others who have discovered climate change as yet another cause, another excuse to don a hair shirt and demand that the human race returns to some mythical rural idyll that never existed.

Don't get me wrong, climate change is a very serious problem and a great threat to very many humans. If we do nothing then millions will die as will, also, the concepts of peace, security and development. My problem is with two groups, the first, those who blame technology and demand that we give everything up returning to a self supporting, growing your own society.

Any way, don't through out technology. We do need to reign in our wastefulness and to do so quickly but renewable technology could help to transform this planet in a very positive and acceptable way. Coal, oil and gas will run out one day, whatever we do.

The second group consists of those who insist that the only way to make change is by trying to convince us all that we are doomed. Change everything by tomorrow or there will be no day after tomorrow! But enough of a rant for one evening, I will leave my bête noire for another day.

A large proportion of our species lives within cities and there are fairly obvious difficulties in being self supporting on the 13th floor of a tower block. I can just imagine the absolutely enthusiastic welcome that will be given by the affluent protesters against every form of wind turbine to us city folk when we invade their rural retreats! Technology wasn't the cause; technology didn't push out the carbon dioxide, it was done by us human beings, acting in ignorance ...... and greed. It's all about how we use technology and about acceptance of a simple mathematical concept, the nature of the finite.

Dickens made a useful comment in David Copperfield:

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

That well describes our use of technology and of the Earth's resources. Of course we need to reign in the demand for more and more short lived consumer products but, in technology, lies part of the solution. Carbon dioxide emissions must be cut by limiting the wasteful use of energy and other resources BUT, at the same time, we should be heavily investing in renewables. Ultimately, that is all the energy that we will be able to harvest.

Amidst all of the doom and gloom there is a real renaissance in so many areas of scientific knowledge and development. A good few years back I subscribed to a whole bunch of scientific development email lists and added to these with some Google Alerts. Were there now time to read and follow back to source every bit of news that is now coming in. Follow back to source? Yes, of course, scientific understanding doesn't appear on very many journos CVs and some newspaper reports of science are both laughably and woefully inadequate, at the same time.

However, there is a lot of very good and very exciting research being carried out from ever smaller solar cells to bigger wind turbines. And, whilst we are considering wind turbines, I have been a fan of Henning Mankell's books for several years. Mankell created the character, Kurt Wallender, a police Inspector in the town of Ystad, just outside Malmo, in Sweden. The Beeb has carried both a TV series, in English, and a film series, in Swedish and subtitled in English, both filmed in the province of Skane, Sweden.

Wait for it!! There is a connection and, whilst mad, I'm not entirely so - yet. Most of the programmes carry a lot of outdoor filming and have, apparently, increased UK visitors to Sweden. If you haven't watched one, do so soon, you can stream or download from the BBC iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/

Look carefully and, amidst the beautiful scenery, the mayhem and murder, you will see a large number of wind turbines, dotted everywhere throughout this area of southern Sweden. Strange that this hasn't caused tourist numbers to fall, isn't it? The interesting point is that you have to make an effort to 'see' the turbines even when action is limited and the cameras are giving views.