The next two weeks or so are really quite important for the future of our planet, for us, and for the people who share it with us.
We may all have our different interpretations of how this situation has been arrived at, and what needs to be done, but I think we can agree that there’s not much risk in trying our best to slow down global heating.
And I just ask those who see it as no more than an inappropriate talking shop to understand that others, me included, have been excited about the opportunities it might bring, for two or three years.
And that the countries that have benefited the most from getting the CO2 into the atmosphere in the first place, countries like the UK, have a bit of a duty to help the countries that haven’t yet enjoyed the wealth to earn the pleasure of messing up the planet.
And that, whatever Boris says about hair shirts, we are all actually going to need to do with rather less stuff, and rather less travel, so that we can keep rather more of that fossil fuel in the ground. You know, when we are being honest with ourselves deep in the night watches. After all, less stuff might just make us a bit happier.
And that all this is going to take quite some leadership, much of which devolves on to the hosts, meaning us.
So it is just a little bit disappointing that, on the eve of this great conference, two of the key heads of government are engaging in an unseemly chest-beating contest over fishing, each one trying to appeal to a small section of their own electorate that they would particularly like to make happy ahead of future votes. Like two rich countries kicking off a trade war is the way to persuade lots of poor countries to join the endeavour, and create less emissions.
They must think that we are completely mad. All we are allowed to do is to think that they are precisely as bad as each other.
But all is not lost.
A little hedgehog has taken up residence in the HairBNB hedgehog cottage that Caroline gave me for Christmas last year. (I only know, as I set a tripwire up to see when it had gone in). I think it found it on PrickAdvisor.
Three years into our renaturing, we have now seen more hedgehogs in a year than we managed in the previous decade. Proof, as if it were needed, that if you remove the danger, most often the patient recovers.
In a dull, rainy and worrying day, it has made me incredibly happy.
Were there an election tomorrow, I would vote for that hedgehog. It really couldn’t do more damage than is being done at the moment if all it did was sleep through until March.
Just one prick. That’s all it needs.
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