Do you find talk about climate change and global warming depressing? I know I do! Whenever I see anything in the news about global warming, pollution or climate change, I’m ashamed to admit it, but I switch off. To be honest: It’s all pretty scary.
It’s much easier not think about things that make us feel uncomfortable. We’ve trashed the rainforests, polluted the seas and wiped out hundreds of animal and plant species. The media delights in feeding us a diet telling us how increasing carbon dioxide levels are inching us ever closer to an environmental catastrophe.
The oil and coal problem
Since the industrial revolution, we’ve been using up oil and coal like it’s going out of fashion. So insatiable has our appetite for cars, planes and electricity been that have bled the earth dry of these fossil fuels.
What should we do then? If we were running out of money, we’d probably cancel the expensive night-out and wait for the next pay-day. The problem we face is that there isn’t another pay-day and there is no overdraft facility! We have built practically every industry and modern way of life on either oil or coal. Staring in the face of fossil fuel bankruptcy, we’ve got to do some serious oil and coal budgeting. We need to make the change from using oil for transport and coal for electricity. And we need to make the change fast.
Most of us don’t understand properly the issues surrounding climate change. I found this brilliant animated video that helped me understand the problems we are facing. Watch it and be educated and hopefully inspired!
The video was put together by the ‘Post Carbon Institute’: visit their website to learn more about how we all need to change our ways of thinking.
For me this means to stop ignoring the problem and start to do my bit (best get recycling those carrier bags then)!
Surviving Global Warming
Help I need a way out!
‘Green Float’: The City of the Future?
Here’s a whacky solution to rising sea levels: floating cities! In an idea reminiscent of the movie ‘Waterworld’ (albeit a more high-tech one), Japanese inventors think that we should abandon land altogether:

I can imagine what you’re thinking, won’t we get sea sick!? The inventors think they’ve got all the bases covered with their futuristic Noah’s Ark:
- The cities will be one kilometre high, and on calm equatorial seas so that air temperature will remain a pleasant and constant 26 degrees C.
- Each island will grow its own food, recycle all waste, and produce no carbon dioxide.
- A strong and super-thin membrane at the bottom stops the city being rocked over from waves.
- Cities could be linked together so no-one gets too lonely!
Apparently up to 50,000 people could live in one of these floating cities and plans are afoot to start building them by 2025!

Would you want to live on a floating city?
Cities in the sky? To me, it sounds a bit like ‘pie in the sky’. Ten thousand people stuck up one tower? No thanks.
That said, it could be a lot better than the solution offered by the animated science fiction sitcom Futurama… (could dropping blocks of ice into the sea really help!?)
What about the Ozone layer?
Can you remember the hole in the ozone layer crisis? It was all across the news in the 1980s. In 1989 laws were brought in to ban ozone-delpeting chemicals: like CFCs (chloro-fluoro-carbons) in aerosols. Since then the Earth’s protective ozone layer has healed itself!
Never underestimate the power of positive change!

“”Perhaps the most startling lesson from the ozone hole is just how quickly our planet can change.” Dr JD Shanklin
Read more:
Confused by Climate Change? Click here for an Interactive Animation explaining how carbon dioxide causes global warming.
A brief history of climate change (BBC): Click Here
NASA have put together a good summary of global warming here.
Click here to read more about the ‘Green Float’ project (lots of pictures and diagrams)!
Is global warming a hoax? Have some questions answered here.
What will the future look like? See maps of the effects of climate change.
Read more about the ozone hole story here!
In the light of your blog, Stuart, Christopher Booker’s book ‘The Real Global Warming Disaster’ makes a sobering read.
Guy.
Hi Guy,
My library has it in stock, I’ll check it out and let you know what I think 😉
Another comment, the Post Carbon Institute’s video about peak oil is excellent – a stark warning there, no doubt!
Guy.
Yes, it’s brilliant isn’t it! There’s a lot in there – I had to watch it a couple of times… 🙂