Carbon and bees - We don’t see the wood for the trees

This week as our Government, already mired in the intractable abortion civil war, realised that they will have to deal with another deeply divisive moral/social issue — right-to-die legislation — two other issues that will have a far, far greater impact on humanity’s future and wellbeing flitted across the news pages without provoking the kind of Pavlovian fury abortion or euthanasia routinely generate.

Neither dealt with Europe’s record and escalating unemployment figures or our crushing debt, but both could, in time, make the abortion and euthanasia debates seem like quaint but tragic diversions that prevented us dealing with the well-signposted threats to our way of life. Our feeble track record in dealing with these matters, our lemming-like refusal to face the consequences of our inaction, suggests the kind of denial a heavy smoker might invoke to dismiss cancer warnings.

In recent days the awkwardly named Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) met in Bonn and heard that, despite more than two decades of trying to cut them, global carbon dioxide emissions teetered on the threshold of 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in 3 million years. Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory recorded CO2 levels of 399.72ppm last week.