"Hi, sorry got some bad doomsday scenarios to report." "Look, we can't afford them, so don't tell us." "But you didn't want to hear them when things were going great either..."

Recent opinion polls suggest that the economic recession has eclipsed concern about the environment.

NVDL: There are a few analogies that are worth remembering. The grasshopper and the ant, and the field mouse and city mouse. I think the moral has something to do with having one's labours rewarded, but not just labors, forethought, anticipation of winter etc. And here we went and had a global party on the stock markets, and still got ourselves in debt, and thought it would be an endless summer? We'd better start preparing for the winter of our discontent, and quick! How? Start changing how you live, what you buy, your perception of yourself as 'consumer'. Start now.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk Unless there is timely action on climate change, California's agricultural bounty could be reduced to a dust bowl and its cities disappear, Barack Obama's energy secretary said yesterday. The apocalyptic scenario sketched out by Steven Chu, the Nobel laureate appointed as energy secretary, was the clearest sign to date of the greening of America's political class under the new president. Suzanne Goldenberg on US energy secretary's warning on climate change Link to this audio In blunt language, Chu said Americans had yet to fully understand the urgency of dealing with climate change. "I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen," he told the Los Angeles Times in his first interview since taking the post. "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California. I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going." He also directed the car industry to produce cars that can achieve 35 miles per gallon by 2020.