'Green fatigue'

The good news is that it would seem the great British public is 'on message' wrt global warming, as Pat Thomas (editor of the Ecologist) put it: 'People are now experiencing climate change in their own lives.'. The bad news is that they're cynical about it.

There's cynicism because on the one hand we're being told [the problem] is very serious and on the other hand we're building runways, mining Alaskan oil; there's a lot going on that appears to be heading in the opposite direction ... There's a cynicism the government is using the green agenda as an excuse for hitting motorists and people who want to fly"

So UKgov needs to put its money where its mouth is and actually do things that really will mitigate climate change. We need leadership or the fiddling while Earth burns urge will kick in. In fact the government may have become a big part of the problem.

The problem is heightened by the government's own failure to halt rises of carbon dioxide emissions, despite its pledges to cut them drastically. Traffic on UK roads rose in the first three quarters of 2007, peaking at 132 billion vehicle kilometres between July to September. At the same time, numbers of flights worldwide rose 4.7 per cent to nearly 30 million during 2007. In Britain, carbon emissions have risen in five out of the 10 years that New Labour have been in power and are now 2.2 per cent higher than they were in 1997. By any standards the government is doing very badly when it comes to taking effective action to deal with carbon emissions.

>'Green fatigue' leads to fear of backlash over climate change | Environment | The Observer: