Climate change - We must act to cope with a new reality

THERE may be little enough we, as a small island of less than five million people bobbing away like so much flotsam between continental Europe and the Atlantic’s western fringes, can do to influence climate change, but we can prepare for the consequences projected by so many reputable scientists.

No matter how determined and earnest our efforts to reform our behaviour, to consume less, to conserve more, they all seem to pale in the face of the knowledge that China has recently opened a power station that burns 40,000 tons of coal a day. And this is just one of the thousands of developments that encourage us to do little enough or, too often, nothing at all to face up to our obligations on these matters.

Another recent and deeply-challenging report predicted that the world’s stocks of seafood will collapse by 2050 at present rates of destruction by fishing.