Leprechauns, Mermaids and Copenhagen

We’re gearing up for the Climate Change blogging competition: the Copenhagen programme has arrived and I’m looking forward to it immensely. It seems excellently planned with an interesting mix between technical and information sessions and then there’s the EcoVisit - namely to the Dyssekilde Ecovillage in Torup, North Sealand with, on the way, a photo-opportunity at Middelgrunden Wind park. Can you park wind, I ask? (Note to self: Don’t be facetious): the ecological village has a population of 130 adults and 50 children who share a vision of a socially, economically and ecologically sustainable community.

The village has its own school and kindergarten, and it is divided into five housing areas with very interesting architecture. (I wonder what that means?) We are enjoined to wear sensible shoes as Dyssekilde only has dirt roads, and there will be coffee, tea, fresh fruit and vegetable snacks waiting for us upon arrival.

More prosaically, I am looking forward to seeing the city of Copenhagen and the little Mermaid - though I have in my possession a miniature statue of it sent to me by someone in Finland called Tea Maria with whom, very many years ago, I used to have long and rather sad discussions about Leprechauns, examples of whose enchanting presence have never quite made it, apparently, across the North and Baltic Seas.

Finland, we concluded, would suit Leprechauns very well as the folk there are always in need of mended shoes and, moreover, have a penchant for gold which Leprechauns would surely have no trouble at all in filing away. It is one of the wonders of nature that in all the history of the Scandinavian invasions of Ireland not one of the little green men ever managed to secrete himself and his whiskers aboard a Viking longship and return to the land of Thor. (Or maybe he did - cue for a story here perhaps).

Anyway, I have had little to do with Copenhagen in the past. It’s somewhere I have never managed to see much of, though I do have early morning memories of a crossing to Malmo once and seeing Hamlet’s castle - Elsinore - through the mist.

Shakespeare’s full play by lasts for four hours. I have seen a ‘lite’ version done in two, which was fast moving and pacy. Also great fun. But now I have come across a version of Hamlet reduced to a single act of fifteen scenes. Hamlet in 45 minutes! Maybe we shall have some fun with that at Christmas here in our little drama society.

But enough, I must turn my thoughts to climate change. Reading up background material to prepare for the next three months I am becoming ever more depressed. What with glaciers crumbling, deserts growing, forests disappearing, dead zones in the ocean; one group of scientists saying ‘we must,’ while another, equally eminent, says ‘no - that’s too dangerous!’ Just say ‘nuclear power’ and you see what I mean.

And last night I watched a television programme about trawlermen fishing in the North Sea. Scooping up at great expense - or so it seemed to me - quantities of immature fish. Is it any wonder that we find we have problems with the climate when the oceans - representing two thirds of our planet’s surface - are dying?

Still, depressing though it is, I am finding it hard to find coherent explanations of what is happening and what we should do about it. I hope for enlightenment in Copenhagen - though whether from the Mermaid, the non-existent Leprechauns or even Hamlet is unclear.
The earth is shrouded not in mist but in a blanket of excess carbon. Even if all man-made emissions stopped tomorrow I read that this excess blanket of some 250 gigatonnes (Gt) worth of CO2 would take a long time to go away. And in the meantime the earth will continue to heat up - won’t it?

Yet the major part of our effort and the focus of our politicians seems to be in saving relatively small amounts of emissions - and in this context 20 or 30 per cent is small. The blanket will still be getting thicker, the earth hotter.

Something else I find hard to understand is why, when the total annual natural carbon flux between the atmosphere and the land and sea is of the order of 200 Gt in each direction, why the relatively small amount (in proportion) of man-made emissions (say around 6-8 Gt currently) should be causing such a problem.

This is not in any way to deny the realities of climate change or the role of carbon dioxide in exacerbating it - simply to pose the question: is the problem more to do with the environment’s failing capacity to absorb carbon than with our fossil fuel burning habits in particular?

Because you see - and this is what I do find truly depressing - we have been busy despoiling the environment for as long as we have been burning fossil fuels. We have even reached the absurd situation where we engage in deforestation practices to plant oil crops to turn into fossil fuel replacements.

What if the environment becomes so damaged that it cannot even cope with natural emissions of CO2? What then? The atoms of the carbon blanket in the sky are not labelled with where they came from. The carbon dioxide from the compost in my garden, from my breath and your breath and the respiration of cells generally, from evaporation out of the sea, is exactly the same carbon dioxide that comes from a coal-fired power station.

That seems to me the really depressing thought and a compelling reason to lighten, drastically, the environmental load we impose on our fragile planet and to plant trees and grow shellfish (whose shells lock carbon away for a million years) wherever we can.

So for these reasons I am doubly looking forward to my visit to Dyssekilde Ecovillage (not forgetting the coffee, tea, fresh fruit and vegetable snacks will be there upon arrival! And should any Leprechaun be reading this and wishes to hitch a ride then he will be welcome to join me so long as he doesn’t mind travelling as hand luggage.