Boiling climate frogs

Recent letter to YourMaidstone:

Dear Editor,

Bob Ellis' letter describing why he doesn't believe climate change is happening (Your Maidstone, 3rd Jan), demonstrates the difficulties in tackling the problem, i.e. people cannot see or feel it impacting on their lives.

The analogy used by Al Gore is of a frog in cold water that is gradually heated up - the frog does not notice that it is getting warmer until it is too late. Fortunately we have better ways of predicting future trends than frogs.

2007 was the second warmest year on record after 2006. The northern polar ice cap has halved in size over the last ten years, there are exponential rises in damage caused by weather across the America, and so on across the world, however in the short term the climate in England will get a little more varied but it is unlikely we will experience anything major here for some time.

The key question people should ask themselves is not whether climate change is real and man made or not, but is the risk of not acting on the overwhelming scientific evidence worth taking?

Our responsibility is to future generations to ensure that we leave the planet in at least as good a state as we inherited it. We must act collectively, decisively and quickly, both locally and globally, to address the number one challenge facing human kind.

Stuart Jeffery
Maidstone Green Party