Carbon Trust Winter Lecture

Putin apparently joked that 'climate change is good for Russians because they won't have to wear fur coats'. But listening to Dr Pachauri, Chairman of IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) wasn't very funny. His Winter Lecture, hosted by the Carbon Trust, was held, rather incongruously at Claridges.

The theme was 'business response to climate change' but the world's leading climate guru started with some pretty gruesome facts about melting glaciers, sea level rise and mass extinction. Eleven out of the past twelve years have apparently been the hottest on record and the minimum predicted temperature rise of 1.8C will have an enormous impact on our world.

For those businesses listening there was a call to action. Apparently apart from trying to slow down the rate of climate change, there's quite a lot to do in terms of adapting to what's coming. Such as protecting ourselves from rising sea-levels, preventing water scarcity, improving our preparedness for disaster and scaling up our health care.

If you couldn't hear what was being said in the room, you could never have imagined that such a gloomy forecast was being presented. It occurs to me that those of us aware of what's happening can do little more than watch in horror, whilst the rest of the world goes about business as usual. Dr Pachauri seemed to have a similar view. He had apparently pointed out to the Indian Prime Minister that the rise of Western-style shopping malls in their country was disastrous. But whether it's shopping malls, cars, flights or power stations there's a growing demand and nothing that's going to stop it.

After the lecture I took the train back down to Somerset - and went out to play bridge with some friends. They had a lovely open fire, warm lights blazing throughout the house and an old fuel hungry aga in the kitchen. It was another world. But will it be one that's acceptable, affordable or available in 20 years time? Perhaps it'll be on a par with wearing a tiger skin fur coat today - in the UK, rather than Russia....

Are motorbikes better than cars?

My sons were more impressed with these bikes than I was!

Are motorbikes better than cars? I've recently had email correspondence with someone who is convinced they are. Clearly a biking enthusiast he says that: small motorcycles use far less petrol than cars, don't stand in traffic jams using up fuel getting nowhere and don't waste fuel on heating. He points out that using a motorbike avoids carting around a ton or so of empty car, clogging the streets and causing congestion. And they have another benefit - using less parking space.

I have to admit that I'm not totally convinced by his arguments. I went on a motorbike across France in the summer and was horrified by what I learnt from fellow bikers. One biker had travelled from Wales to West Germany for a weekend on a bike that did around 20mpg. Now that's not environmentally friendly. And he wasn't the only one - I hadn't appreciated until this trip that the big, super-powered bikes are far from super-efficient.

On my return, a friend came to dinner on an old motorbike - an antique. That was much better - it did about 70 mpg. And my email correspondent says that 'the ubiquitous Honda 50' does 125 mpg'.

My view of the issue is this. Enthusiastic bikers generally like powerful bikes that aren't very fuel efficient. But if we could get large numbers of people out of their cars and onto small whizzy bikes - particularly in urban areas - that would be great. Less emissions, less congestion and less land taken up for transport.

So a cautious thumbs up for motorbikes - but not testosterone powered gas guzzling monsters.

Christmas waste

One of the most striking things about Christmas is the amount of waste we all produce. Waste heat, waste light, waste food and most of all waste packaging. Actually, quite a lot of presents are wasteful too. I wonder what percentage of gifts are actually appreciated and how many of those are useful.

I have to admit that I'm a real fan of useful presents but I know that not everyone agrees with this approach. The first Christmas after I was married, I gave my husband a filing cabinet. He really needed to get his papers in order - but he never used it! He gave me a Nintendo and a pair of roller blades, which I thought was rather frivolous! So they didn't get much use either.....

Most of my family meet on Christmas day at my sister's house. She does a wonderful Christmas lunch with all the trimmings. In fact she's so efficient that she has a list of what we're going to eat on a blackboard to make sure that we don't forget to help ourselves to all the stuffings, cranberry sauce, bread sauce or anything else. It's great.

One of our traditions is to read or recite poetry before lunch. My contributions are not always environmental but this year I found quite a good poem about climate change... But more fun than that was one of my sons singing 'Over the Rainbow'.

More recently, its become a custom for me to collect up all the waste from unwrapped presents. I carefully sort through it and separate out wrapping paper to use next year, from waste paper and cardboard for recycling. Then I join the throng at the recycling centre - there was quite a queue this year. The really good thing was that my local council have extended the number of things they recycle. They have separate places for cartons, mobile phones, plastic bags and batteries amongst other things.

Of course I'm a supporter of recycling but more important than that is to produce less waste in the first place. And that's a big challenge for all of us....