Fiddling (?) while the planet burns?

The RSPB is trying to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions just as all right-thinking businesses are.  Our self-imposed target is a 3% reduction per head of staff per annum for the duration of our 5-year corporate strategy - this is in line with what the UK will have to achieve to reach an 80% reduction target by 2050 and help the world stand any chance of avoiding serious, deadly serious, climate change impacts. 3% doesn't sound much does it? - but we are finding it really really difficult to achieve!  And I can't blame colleagues in other parts of the RSPB because my own staff in the Conservation Directorate exceeded our carbon budget last year.  Will Ed Miliband, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary of State ever speak to me again?

Our problem is that the RSPB's international work has grown and you can't take the train to India, Sumatra or Gough Island!  And, although we have reduced our domestic travel emissions considerably one long distance flight gobbles up an awful lot of other people's smaller savings!  We'll have to do better this year through better planning and tough decisions on travel.  But that's a microcosm of what is facing the planet - unless we change what we do then the planet will be cooked.  And the choices are difficult.  Will the aforementioned Mr Miliband (whose expenses seem to have been in exemplary order!) make the right decisions over carbon capture and storage for new coal-fired power stations in the next few weeks? 

As part of trying to get our own house more in order, this week there is a series of events for staff here at the RSPB's Bedfordshire headquarters, and there are posters up all over the place asking what a variety of historical characters would do about climate change.  One of them is Winston Churchill and a few weeks ago I came across what I think would be the answer - or at least how he would have commented on today's politicians' slow realisation of the scale of what they need to do.  Churchill's words to describe how politicians failed to react to the menace of Hitler could be applied to how today's politicians are reacting to the menace of global climate change: "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent."  Can you hear that gravelly voice saying these words - perhaps emphasised by a pointing finger?

I came across this quote myself, isn't the internet wonderful!, and then discovered that Al Gore had used it in his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize which he received for his climate change campaigning.  Gore's speech is well worth reading http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2007/gore-lecture_en.html

It's easy to take a swipe at MPs (some of their number have made it easy!) but too many Westminster MPs may be fiddling their expenses while the planet burns.