I found university a little dispiriting. I thought I would enter the great halls of Plato, but instead I entered the halls of an intellectual sausage factory. I wanted to do something not on the main course, and chose the environment.

The obvious issue is providing clean drinking water and sanitation to every single human being on earth at the cost of little more than one year of the Kyoto treaty.

Im no expert on American politics.

Winter regularly takes many more lives than any heat wave: 25,000 to 50,000 each year die in Britain from excess cold. Across Europe, there are six times more cold-related deaths than heat-related deaths...by 2050...Warmer temperatures will save 1.4 million lives each year.

Of course, the world is full of problems. But on the other hand it's important to get the sense... are we generally moving in the right direction or the wrong direction?

My suggestion is that we should first work to ensure the Third World has clean drinking water and sanitation.

Listen, global warming is a real problem, but it's not the end of the world. A 30-centimetre sea level rise is just not going to bring the world to a standstill, just like it didn't over the last 150 years.