BURNS (CONT)

government will eventually fall in line, though almost certainly not under Bush. In all this, there is a telling lesson. It is that national governments generally lag behind sensible opinion and are rather slower to act than smaller units of government. If you look locally in the US, enlightened individuals are acting.

On the West Coast, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced plans to reduce emissions in California to 2000 levels by 2010 and 1990 levels by 2020. In New York, Mayor Bloomberg has signed bills to reduce vehicle emissions, while plans to cap the pollution from power stations are well ahead of Federal policy.

No doubt the Prime Minister would like Britain to be in this vanguard, but let's not forget that at the beginning of the year the British government was applying to exceed the quota of C0<->2 emissions agreed at Kyoto by more than 2 per cent. Britain cannot say one thing to the US, while resisting Kyoto targets itself.

Equally, we cannot expect government to do it all for us. Industries have to take action before they are told to; town and country councils must not wait for government directives because they will be too late. It is a question of each of us engaging that smallest unit in the government of human affairs - the individual conscience - and acting. We don't have time for G8 leaders to agree on what we all know to be true.

Last winter, I attended the climate change conference at the new Met Office headquarters outside Exeter. In the end of the conference, there was an open session in which scientists talked about what they had heard over the previous days. I will never forget the solemn urgency of that session. Even the scientist were shocked by how advanced various manifestations of global warming were. I was sitting next to the woman who has done pioneering work on the pH levels of the oceans. Like the others, she had seen the abyss and it showed in her face.

I wish we could all have that experience, because the conviction of the masses is the only way things will change. But here's the catch. It involves sacrifice and a loss of what we previously regarded as our rights to travel and consume freely. If I criticize the backwardness of Bush and his oil lobby, it follows that I must take action on a personal level - retire my ancient Volvo, use energy-saving light bulbs, switch off the computer at night, do away with the dishwasher, make fewer journeys by air, install solar panels, get a bicycle.

As yet, I have done none of these things.

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