Tiresome

I still encounter people who doubt climate change. I try to understand why - after all, some of the pictures painted are incredibly bleak (see here). But eventually you have to stop pretending that it's a myth perpetuated by governments in some kind of mass conspiracy to cut all the fun out of your life. Governments can do many things, but they can't fake mass melt on Mount Everest (as outlined on the front of today's Independent - see here), or the melting ice sheets in the Arctic.

Since my own environmental reawakening back at the turn of the millennium, I've done some dumb things (all those flights to Canada, the US and Europe between 2002 and 2006), but in many ways my life is so much better for the changes I've managed to make. Alan Cumming recently said in the Independent that the best age to be is any point from the moment you realise you can't change the past, but you can change the future.

Since I've turned 30 I've lived the best years of my life - I can cook properly now, am learning to grow vegetables from scratch and have drastically cut back my global footprint, despite working from home. I've escaped the rat race and rampant consumerism that blights the entire western world - while others try desperately to find happiness in yet another mobile phone or shopping spree, I'm discovering it in those quiet moments of serenity when I'm able to reflect and thank my lucky stars for what I have, not rail against what I haven't.

There are times when I despair about humanity - so many people are frankly a waste of space of resources, contributing little or nothing to their own growth, never mind anyone else's (and I'm not talking about economics here). It's doubly frustrating because as a species we're at the point where if we all grew up and started following some basic fundamentals we'd be capable of so much.