The Eject Button

I've just edited a fascinating but utterly horrifying documentary about climate change in the northern hemisphere and its global implications - one of those pieces that makes you want to run out into the street screaming and gnashing your teeth. (Yes, if you're talented enough to be able to gnash your teeth with your mouth open, that is. Shut up!) Apart from the obvious environmental considerations, it brought two things to mind.

Firstly, that this planet isn't going to take any crap from us. If we generate too many people living too much in a mode that is incompatible with it (i.e. burning gross amounts of coal and oil), something will happen to kill us off until the levels are sustainable again. I remember someone - probably Mart, who knows about these things - telling me that if a naturally occurring population of animals grows beyond sustainable levels, an anxiety kicks in that leads to them fighting and killing each other. A bit like road rage taken to its ultimate conclusion. On, then, a massive scale, too much carbon monoxide etc in the air and the planet is going to reboot, killing us off in the process and removing the irritant from its system. We can't destroy the planet - it won't let us. We can only destroy ourselves.

Secondly, I appreciate the value of the media in kicking my environmental consience into gear, but I'd rather I didn't have the crap scared out of me by stuff I can do NOTHING about. I read somewhere that the problem with news now is that it alerts us to problems we are utterly helpless to rectify and so it just increases our anxiety. (I don't need any more anxiety, thank you very much.) Once upon a time, when news was only local, we would only hear about things that were within reach, and so could help with. (I'm not saying international news is bad, by the way - only that in some cases it may not serve the purpose it sets out to.) I consider myself a reasonably environmentally conscious gal - my latest panic is about how much bloody packaging I consume. Why can't I take reusable containers to the supermarket and just have them refilled with crushed tomatoes, face cream, cheese blah blah rather than throw out a packet every time I've made a bolognaise / hydrated myself / eaten 10 slices? Would anyone like to start a supermarket with me along these lines? But I'm not a climatic scientist. I can (and try) myself do the right things, but I'm not in a position to lead others or lobby for anything in particular. It could be there's nothing we can do, by the way. I need the guidance of those in the know and I DON'T need a BBC documentary to freak me out with scary music and grim predictions, interesting though they were.