It made the front page of US News and World Report on the 5th, according to tcsdaily, and Time as well as Vanity Fair have been there recently. Last night the BBC continued its series on Climate Chaos, the subject already of a few harsh words.
The programme was Five Disasters Waiting to Happen. Forgive me for flaying this one too but I think until serious broadcasters like the BBC get this right then the heat generated by this debate will have only a tepid effect.
The show showed two disasters that have happened (15,000 people dead in Paris, killed by a heatwave in 2003, 1,000 in Mumbai, drowned in an exceptional Monsoon, 2005). Apart from that it was London's vulnerability (again) to tidal flooding, Tu Valu disappearing into the ocean and Shanghai, over built and building up its own flood risk as a quarter of a million people arrive every year looking for a new life.
The BBC lumped these quite different stories together because it is responding, it claims, to its viewers' concerns. Sure viewers are concerned about global warming but that's because they know it's happening. What's the point in showing programmes that underline it? The purpose should be to show solutions or to show political barriers to change.
The one I'm waiting to see will show us how Blair's inner cabinet prepared for the 2005 Gleneagles G8 summit in the rosy expectation that Bush would deliver a breakthrough on US environmental policy. Yes for 18 months previously junior aides preapred the ground, building expectation among environmentalists. This story would also tell us what other calculations went into backing Bush on Iraq. And it was tell us a way out other than awaiting a new US president.
