I shouldn't be too surprised, I suppose, that with the exception of The Observer, the mainstream media has paid little attention to the report commissioned by the Pentagon on the security risk associated with climate change. Neither the BBC nor CNN considered it worth reporting, and only today has it rated a mention in The New York Times, albeit in conjunction with reference to an upcoming Hollywood movie on the subject of environmental catastrophe (see The Sky is Falling! Say Hollywood and, Yes, the Pentagon). For those interested, the full Pentagon report is available here. If you choose to read it you will be doing what, according to the NYT, the powers-that-be in Washington won't. Apparently a Pentagon spokesmen has said the report had not been passed on to the 'top brass' in the Defense Department or the Bush administration.
News that Ralph Nader will be running for the White House, and that another report has been released that presents a very bleak outlook for the Great Barrier Reef should come as no great surprise, but I choked on my muesli bar this morning when I read in The Guardian that the Pentagon has issued a warning on the dangers of global warming (see Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us).
Apparently, a secret report -- suppressed by US defence chiefs for four months -- warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas, Britain will plunge into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020, while nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. This will obviously come as a bit of a blow to Dubya who consistently maintains that global warming is no big deal.
That trashy, left-wing environmental mag The Economist is at it again -- this time printing an article, Killer trees, that laments over the removal of roadside trees. Incredibly, some 3 million such trees (90 per cent in total) have been cut down in the last 30 years because of road 'improvements' and fears about road deaths. For non-subscribers the full article is reproduced below.
A wrong-headed campaign against roadside trees
THE tree-lined roads painted by Alfred Sisley and his fellow impressionists are emblematic of France. Yet they are vanishing fast. Forty kilometres (25 miles) of 200-year-old plane trees, in their neat twin rows, have just been cut down near Levignac, in the south-west, to make way for a convoy of components for Airbus's A380 superjumbo, being built in Toulouse. According to a survey by the French forestry commission, 20,000km of roadside trees (some 3m trees, or almost 90% of the total) have gone in the past 30 years.
Although they are often said to be a legacy of Napoleon, who wanted to give shade to his soldiers, France's roadside trees actually date to the 16th century, when Henri IV ordered the building of straight roads flanked by arbres d'alignement on both sides. Planted to provide firewood and building materials, as well as shade, to passing armies, the plane trees later became loved for their beauty, eulogised by such writers as Balzac and Colette and, later, by film directors such as Jean-Luc Godard.
Now their numbers have dwindled to a mere 250,000. Road improvements and concerns about road deaths are to blame. “Lateral obstacles”, usually trees, account for nearly two-fifths of the country's fatal car accidents. In most cases, a drunken driver veers off the road and hits a tree. Camus was killed in 1960 when his publisher drove into a tree, as was Coluche (a comedian fond of a bottle of wine at lunch) in 1986.
Yet, as Chantal Fauché, a 50-year-old teacher, sagely observes, “if you hit a tree, it is not the fault of the tree.” She is the founder of Arbres et Routes, an association for the protection of roadside trees, based in the department of Gers. The doughty Mme Fauché has managed to save several thousand trees in the past few years, by painstaking negotiations with local councils.
The number of road deaths in France has fallen by over 20%, to below 6,000 a year, since the government cracked down on speeding last year. A campaign has begun against drunk driving. Yet the tree massacre continues, at the rate of 100 a day. The government is offering to plant two trees to replace every one lost to the A380. But, as Mme Fauché notes, “it takes 100 years to grow a plane tree—but just five minutes to cut it down.”
As a person who never feels truly happy unless I am depriving myself of some sort of pleasure, I have been a long time subscriber to The Economist. This magazine has, for many years, thoroughly irritated me with its pious, supercilious, and doctrinaire attitude to certain issues. In recent times, however, I've begun to feel increasingly cheated by its seemingly enlightened approach. There have been a number of articles that question the orthodoxy and then ... this week ... (shock, horror) they seem to have developed a sense of humour with an article entitled Transatlantic cleavage. It would now appear that a subscription to The Spectator is my only option.
Yours, 'Disgusted', Tunbridge Wells.
I'm going back a few years now, but I remember my brother, Dave, in between jobs one time, took up a position as assistant manager at McDonalds in South Yorkshire somewhere (Sheffield, I think). It was a bit of an eye-opener for him, and he struggled coming to terms with certain aspects of the corporate culture, not least of these being the reference to 'fries' rather than 'chips'. Having to say this went against the grain somewhat, but this wasn't the only problem. Saying the word 'fries' in a Brummie accent comes out as 'froys'. This presented communication problems with some of his Sheffield customers and, on one occasion, he had to resort to saying the 'chips' word under his breath. These days, of course, US linguistic imperialism is such that saying fries is 'cool' and it is generally understood in any accent. However, an article published in the New York Post recently, Arch enemy, suggests that the good old American fry (and its various complements) may have seen its day.
McDonalds has become a popular target for the anti-MNC lobby in recent years, and this story will no doubt assist their cause. Meanwhile, the BBC reports today that another US corporate icon is in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. In an article, India finds pesticides in colas, it appears that Indian MPs have upheld the findings of an environment group which reported that Coca-cola and Pepsi drinks contained pesticide residues. The irony, of course, is westerners travelling to India are strongly advised to avoid drinking the water.
There is an interesting piece in The Observer today, A dirty business, that reflects on the 1984-85 miners' strike in the UK. I have quite vivid recollections of this dispute, not least because I was in the thick of it. Recently qualified as a school teacher, I was resident in South Yorkshire at the time and could not avoid becoming politicised by the whole affair. The battle between police and pickets at Orgreave and the police 'occupation' of Armthorpe were real eye-openers for me, and a sad indictment on life in Thatcherite Britain.