OUR WRECKED WORLD HAS LEARNT NOTHING

Hard on the heels of Sir Nicholas Stern's epochal report on the dire consequences of global-overheating comes a UN report that shows greenhouse-gas emissions are rising, particular from the worst offenders, the rich, industrialised nations. Emission levels are up 3.3% since 1990. The USA is far and away the worst. It pumps out 25% of the world's emissions.

We never, ever learn. But we will not be able to say we were not told. We have been: plainly, unequivocally. Sternly.

How long will it take to get through the brain-damaged skulls of those responsible for the mess, the Black Stuff pushers and the inept politicians, that we now live on a different planet. The Earth that the human race has lived on for the past 10,000 years has gone, because we have destroyed it. The normality on which we have predicated our decisions for 10,000 years has gone because we have destroyed it.

We must therefore predicate our decisions on the new, damaged reality. If not, we will make it unimaginably worse. As the teenagers say, 'Get real.'

The only question to ask of any proposed action is ' Will it profit the planet or push it further into climatic debit?' Nothing else. Because the real bottom line is life. Not money. It has always been so, but now our noses have been forcibly rubbed in that fundamental truth.

Get real.