From Chris Perkins.
THE article in Wednesday’s JEP under the headline ‘Here comes the sun’ is either flippant or plain irresponsible.

Global warming is a problem that has to be addressed by all governments. Only recently the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor James McCarthy, warned that Ba rack Obama’s government had just four years to save the planet. He said: ‘If we don’t make significant progress in these areas, I think the planet is in huge trouble.’

The trouble Mr McCarthy refers to could include rises in sea level that will submerge many low-lying areas of the world (including parts of Jersey); the destruction of the Amazon rainforest ecosystem; perennial drought in areas such as southern Africa; melting glaciers that will lead to the failure of river systems and thus agriculture in densely populated areas of south-east Asia; bigger and more frequent storms;and the extinction of many species of plant and animal as they fail to cope with the change in climate.

All this and more will probably mean millions, perhaps billions, of starving people.
Your report seems to indicate that we mustn’t worry about any of the above, because we may be able to grow olives and Jersey Royals a little earlier in the year. As for the tourists who will flock once more to our shores, it should be pointed out that the possible 3°C increase in temperature is a globally predicted average and does not just apply to Jersey.

Perhaps also with the climate-induced problems facing the world by the year 2080, people may have more to worry about than going on holiday to a half-submerged island in the English Channel.

With the draft Strategic Plan currently containing no reference to Jersey’s responsibility to address the causes of global warming – the publication Turning Point to which you refer is 107 pages long, but dedicates less than two pages to climate change mitigation – I would hope that your newspaper will push Senator Cohen and his colleagues to produce some actual policies, rather than thinking that the imminent catastrophe to engulf our planet could produce some ‘opportunities’.
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