Something in the air: climate change is hot

Top of the Pops: It's part of my job as a freelance climate change editor for OneClimate.net to follow breaking news stories and the latest blog opinion from around the world. So I scan through hundreds of newsfeeds every week and I'm getting a concerted message, loud and clear: climate change issues are top of the agenda just about everywhere, but particularly in North America and, increasingly, China.

The Pigs are flying: Even George W managed to use the phrase 'global climate change' (once) in his lacklustre State of the Union address. ExxonMobil has suddenly become - or has appeared to become - greener, finally pushed by the Union of Concerned Scientists' report into the oil company's covert funding of climate sceptics. Yes, the climate pigs are in the air. The deniers haven't gone away but they're becoming marginalised. It looks like the year things are going to really start to happen. Politicians are picking up the scent and realising not only that many people but also many corporations want them to do something; to legislate. Sir Nicholas Stern has proposed a world carbon tax. Carbon rationing is being talked about as if it might actually happen. On 21 January, Sir David Attenborough presented Climate Change - Britain Under Threat at peak time on BBC television. Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth is now available free if you haven't seen it. A couple of days ago, BBC2 screened Should I Really Give Up Flying?

"What people (must) do is to change their behaviour and their attitudes. If we do care about our grandchildren then we have to do something, and we have to demand that our governments do something." Sir David Attenborough, BBC.

Is The End Nigh? But will all this frenzy of activity and potential action be enough and in time? Who knows, but we will shortly have a much better idea as the IPCC finalizes its Fourth Assessment Report "Climate Change 2007", due for release on 2 February. Pre-publication syntheses of this report do not make cheerful reading. Just about everything previously predicted is going to be worse than expected and happen sooner. So, as is it is becoming customary to say, when someone has just written such doom-laden words, we've got to change and we have to do it now. I am doing so. How about you?