Passion by Proxy

For months now I have been interviewing people for a job in our environmental publishing 'wing'. I have been struck by how passionately they have proclaimed their interest in environmental issues. The passion has obviously come in varying degrees of sincerity, but not one of them (as far as I remember) has been interested enough to join with those who push for change. No membership of Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, not even of the RSPB or the Soil Asosciation, no activism, no political engagement. Leaving aside any cynicism about 'going for interviews', I wonder if we are inclined to splutter and bluster in our own isolated boxes rather than more effectively join with the wider community? Does the Internet encourage us to think that we are being effective (and I do know that we can be) when we are just ranting into the ether?

Keen to be Green (up to a point)

It is heartening to be having so many conversations about climate change, however distressing the subject. There was a time - which seemed to be endless - when mention of the subject would produce groans and the rolling of eyeballs.

But most of the people with whom I chat about this seem to have taken it on board on one level and not on many more. They are happy to tell me about their recycling (usually compulsory now), about their hostility to short-sighted political behaviour, about the dangers to the Maldives. Then they climb back into their 4x4s or set off to Thailand and New Zealand - or to Barcelona for a long week-end. These are good people. What is needed to shake them out of their myopia?

Oh well - we will press on with our low-level campaign to introduce green ideas to our readers and, more importantly, to our owners. They are responding with some enthusiasm, especially to the pressure on them to provide only the best food: local and/or organic.

View from Symonds Yat inspires literary blog posting

A week-end walk along the Wye began in thick, cold fog and ended in the sort of winter sunshine that would destroy any embryonic thought of emigration. These are my wistful notes from the moment the sun broke through at the top of the rock:

'A fog-dense shroud draped itself over every rock, every tree, occasionally lifting its hem to play with our hopes. A hint of autumnal gold here, a dark swathe of conifer there - then nothing.

There is nothing else to see until the sun, opaque yet brilliant, scorches aside a thin protective sheen of milky white. A tree's top is revealed, barely a hint. Then another, 'til a small band of brothers stands proud through the smoke, joined now by more, the cover sinking slowly into the valley and baring forest, field and now the valley under the sun's new domain.'

Perhaps there is no need to go walking in Andalucia after all, even by train.