Perspectives on a new climate

Just when you thought global warming predictions couldn't get any worse, the Sunday Times last week published the most apocalyptic yet. Without radical action on carbon emissions, its report stated, globally life-changing impacts could hit in 50 years. Ultimately we could push the environment beyond its “tipping point” where climate change shifts into automatic. The worst-case scenario is a 6^OC temperature rise by 2100. Among the gruesome consequences of this would be hotter, less dense oceans releasing huge bubbles of methane from the seabed. These would shoot to the surface and explode like multiple atomic bombs.

When I got to this point in the article, I was relieved it was time for the rugby and I had an excuse for a beer.

It's reassuring, of course, that the broader scientific community doesn't take quite such a bleak outlook. But the fact that a national newspaper published it was added evidence that climate change is fast becoming the issue preoccupying the public, politicians and business. That was further underlined this week by the debate around the Climate Change Bill, with each party vying to occupy the highest environmental ground. It was highlighted too by the turnout at the Ecobuild show, which focuses on sustainable construction and reports a doubling of visitors.

Ecobuild also provided evidence of the potential effects of climate change strategies for the timber industry. The sector is increasingly seen as part of the solution, providing substitutes for less environmentally-sound products. But the persistence of poor forestry practice and illegal logging in some areas creates the image that it is also part of the problem. In the years ahead it will be shaped by how it deals with the latter and makes the most of the former. And this will undoubtedly be a key theme of our new crystal-ball gazing Medite-sponsored Wood Futures articles. The first, by American Ward Williams, predicts challenges as well as opportunities ahead, but it makes more comfortable reading than the doom-laden Sunday Times’ forecast.