While it may appear to be the picture is not of the savanna in Southern Africa somewhere and there are no lions lurking in the high grass - at least I hope not. In fact that photo was taken in Parkland in the South-East of England just outside London on 07/26/2006 and it shows, to some extent, the effect that the heat of around 33 C is having and the drought.
Whether this is Global Warming due to CO2 in the atmosphere, something I still have to be convinced off entirely, or whether, and this is more likely, it is a case of the Earth cycles of hot spells and cold spells that run about every 500 yeas and we are just coming up to the peak of such a hot spell slowly but surely the fact remains that we will have to get used to the fact, so it would seem, that we will have such summers with us for some time to come and even that the winters will be dryers though maybe even colder, then again not. The other problem for the South-East of England is also the fact that there are too many houses and too many people living here and there just are not enough resources. Why everything has to congregate in the area around the capital and as far down south as Devon (yes, people commute thus far to offices in London) beats me, especially in today's society with ADSL and Internet and all that jazz.
If there is a contributing factor of the way we deal with the environment then I guess we all will have to wake up and mend our ways and traveling x-amount of miles by car or train to offices such a distance away day in day out is NOT conducive to a good environment. The same is true as regards to recycling and energy production, whether we are talking about electricity or gas. We can produce electricity, like the Swedes do, from waste and we can also get gas, gas with which to cook and heat, from waste. That, however, could be the subject of another post,
© M Smith, July 26, 2006
