One week: four climate change warnings

A dead body on a European mountain; a surfeit of fish off Iceland; and still more flooding in Pakistan and Niger.

The excitement over the body was restricted to the fact that it was that of a First World War soldier, still in his fatigues and boots, found on the highest peak in the Italian Dolomites. The fact that he’d been exposed by the retreating permafrost was a bit part player in the report.

It was in talking to the Icelandic fisheries minister on Thursday, that yet again the matter of climate change arose as a mere side-issue. Jon Bjarnason’s government is wrestling with the EU over fish quotas.

The steep rise in water temperatures off Iceland have a bigger part to play in delivering the unprecedented tonnage of mackerel than the careful husbanding and quotas established by the international community. Yet rather than wonder about the rising sea temperatures and the implications for mankind, the issue was restricted to the fish.

It is still raining in Pakistan, and the south is being inundated by what had already engulfed the north.

Understandably, the agony and suffering of the people has been paramount. But this is a wholly unusual event that goes far, far beyond heavy monsoon activity.

It is still raining in Niger – this dusty, sandy, Saharan state is awash from the capital city to the outback – after months and months of drought.

Four stories, four instances in just one week, in which climate change, global warming, and man’s involvement rear their head as central issues for debate.

Yet no one could emerge from this week thinking – this was a week when the world took note.

Sure they took note of the suffering, but of the threads beneath? Was it the disastrous Copenhagen Summit last year; the e-mail furore amongst climate change scientists, or the recession that dealt the blow?

Is the climate change debate dead? Or is it still to be had? It has certainly ceased to dominate the West’s current agenda. Why?