Recently in Writing Category

I know I've barely made any progress on Climate Change for the Rest of Us but I've started making some notes for a new project which will use folk songs as a way into history. I've been interested in both for yonks, so it doesn't seem all that self-indulgent a thing to do. The trouble is that it's going to be quite a job researching it all. It'll be a much longer job than the climate change book but I can at least start outlining it and making notes for each of the chapters.

One thing I have to do is come up with a working title. Nothing springs to mind. I thought Songlines sounded good. I then realised it sounded good because of the magazine and website of that name, not to mention Bruce Chatwin's book. So at the moment, it's called the History Songbook. Dull, isn't it? I hope a title will present itself as I write the thing.

Since I started thinking about Climate Change for the Rest of Us I haven't really carried out much of what might actually be called work on it. I've written a draft of the introduction which really only serves as a To-Do list for the project. By chance I was listening to the Little Atoms podcast on Christmas Day which was recorded at The Return of Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People. The very wonderful Johnny Ball was there and was talking about how he didn't think that anthropogenic climate change was actually happening. He said that he got quite a rough ride from the audience at the show and that doesn't surprise me in the least. He also got quite a rough ride from at least one of the presenters on the podcast.

There is a problem in promoting scepticism and the scientific process and that is that there are always people who have just enough scientific training to be able to present data which contradicts the case you're trying to make. I love Johnny Ball. I used to watch shows like Think of a Number and Think Again avidly and he helped feed my enthusiasm for science and technology. He is a well-known and well-beloved communicator of science and when he says that perhaps current climate science is incorrect, then people listen, particularly those who don't really want the data of the climate scientists to be correct.

As a direct result of listening to this single interview, I've decided to rejig part of the book and give more room to the climate change sceptics. I haven't changed my own views on climate change - it's real, it's happening, let's deal with it - but I think I have to be a little more respectful to those who take a different view. If I were completely dismissive of those people, my own case would be weaker and the book would not be as good as it could be.

I've started a new book project. It's about how to cope with the whole climate change debate if you're not an activist, climate scientist or politician and just want to do the right thing. If I get nowhere with it over the holidays, I'll take the idea to a couple of publishers and see if they can commission it from their author pool. I can't be the only person who's fed up feeling guilty because I'd rather push the central heating up a notch rather than put on another jumper, or who has to drive for their job, or who really, really likes a great big slab of red meat. My plan is to go through the evidence, talking to some climate scientists, activists and politicians and try to get to the bottom of why it's all important.

It must be important, mustn't it? I mean that's why all those people are in Copenhagen. I wonder how many of them got there by bicycle. Probably not many.