The Copenhagen summit is screwed - but that doesn't mean the rest of us are

Worried about climate change and the Copenhagen talks? Go and read this excellent article immediately.

Then go here for some ideas of what to do about it.

Then tell all your friends.

We still have a chance here, people. Let's get on it.

Number Ones

Merrick has slapped me with one of those blog meme challenge thingies - to find five phrases which, when typed into Google, bring up my blog as the number one result.

To give some context, Merrick's own phrases of Google-related glory include "An old man wanking into a sock" and "Caviar enemas". Lovely. You won't be surprised to learn that he's awarding bonus points for anything that sounds even slightly salacious or perverse, bless him.

Here are five of my number ones, which I believe reflect my spectrum of writing topics fairly well:

"sex kills more people than terrorism"
"Pink and purple sparkly cowboy hats"
"Zombie-freezing technology"
"sprayed with Kelvin Mackenzie's bile"
"police premature ejection"

Though I'd like to also give honourable mentions to:

"anarchist-eco-hippy-tree-munching-lentil-loving-mud-warrior"
"The people vs. climate chaos"

and

"a boat carved out of a giant carrot"

This particular phrase returns 101 exact matches, all of them referring to me. Which I think, according to the rules of the internet, means that I now have to get it carved on my headstone.

Merrick tagged a few others too - you can check out their results here (this is also a good excuse to plug these rather delicious blogs):

Dreamflesh
Alice in Blogland
The Quiet Road

I'm now meant to tag five other blogs and thus spread this delightful bit of time-wasting across the internet. So let's see if I can persuade this lot to do it:

Punk Science
Contains Mild Peril*
Zoetic
Graham's Grumbles
Chicken Yoghurt

Or if you fancy having a go yourself, why not declare your results in the comments below?

Mark Lynas was ill

I got drafted in at the last minute to do a climate talk for the Women's Institute this afternoon.

I was given only the vaguest of briefs, so I tried to cover the basic science, climate denialism, where the UK's emissions were coming from (with the help of the Walk The Walk training that I worked on for COIN), and what we could do about it. With a focus on moving away from individual lifestyle choices towards campaigning and creating solutions in our communities, with a burst of anti-consumerist poetry at the end.

I had no idea what to expect...but I have to say that they were one of the most switched-on, engaged and vocal(!) audiences I've ever spoken in front of. Loads of useful discussion and practical suggestions from the floor, and the feeling that they really were going to go back home and take some useful action on this stuff. Followed by tea and cake all round (which reminded me that I must send the WI some vegan recipes...). Next stop Climate Camp?

This means that I've now done climate action talks for "excluded" teenagers, head teachers, the police, and the Women's Institute, as well as having had a head-to-head debate with someone from Spiked (ugh), and been sprayed with Kelvin Mackenzie's bile on live radio. I now truly feel ready for anything life can throw at me. With the possible exception of rampaging cows.