Counterblast

It couldn't have been timed better but the dangerous smog that engulfed Paris and Nord-Pas-de-Calais a few weeks ago has migrated across the English Channel barely a day after the release of the IPCC report on climate change met with a sniffy response from the usual, scientifically illiterate quarters.  For having so long denied climate change was even happening, let alone man-made (and even now express scepticism), the denialists now say that little can be done to mitigate it, Britain makes a miniscule contribution to global emissions and we should all focus all our energies on adapting to the changing climate.  By and large, these are the same people who want to limit immigration and also want to slash international aid obligations, thereby making the lives of those who will be hit hardest by climate change even more desperate, encouraging migration to Britain!  Yet this smog is so pervasive it defies all available adaptation strategies - this is not simply a matter of more extensive dredging of rivers.  We should encourage greener, more efficient ways of generating energy, not because it's good for the planet but primarily because its good for our lungs.
Little can be done against the prevailing winds that have scourged the Sahara of dust and dumped it on us, but the air pollution we have produced allied with the industrial air pollution of northern Europe (a good reason to have the kind of international cooperation represented by the likes of the EU - another bogeyman of the denialists - to counteract the release of particularates in other lands) has made a toxic brew stiffer than that which Beijing usually endures (and I've encountered that smog as well).  The Medway basin was always Mexico City-lite but the haze, like the habitual fog, has crawled out of this natural pit.  I live on top of a hill with a strong breeze often prevalent but still I can see a visual dimming and blurring of the outlines of trees and buildings.
Doubly ironically, people take to their cars instead of walking, bussing or cycling in or getting the train (outright or park-and-ride), thereby increasing the pollution levels and trapping all the pollution from the car ahead of them in their own enclosed box.  This illustrates the poverty of the environmental debate in this country.  Worse than sugar, people know it's not good for the Earth but fail to link to their own circumstances their actions or are unwilling to do so.  Of course, there are powerful interests that want to keep it this way and most of them are in the highest echelons of government, media and commerce.