Oh god, it's Copenhagen...!

Two weeks of wall-to-wall commentary about climate change in which we'll get endless debate driven less by a grounded understanding of science and politics, and more by a weird culture-war-by-proxy between liberals and free marketeers.

Influenza Derek

On 1 July, I took part in a panel discussion at the World Conference of Science Journalists on the topic of whether the media had overexaggerated the threat of 'swine flu'. Here are my opening comments:

'My favourite satirical website, The Daily Mash has a story in response to the advice from doctors not to hold swine flu parties. The story has doctors warning that all children's parties are a stupid idea, reminding readers what happened to the widescreen TV last time. The story also describes the threat from swine flu as having been upgraded from 'elaborate hoax' to 'about as bad as a badger attack'.

This indicates the cynicism that media reporting of epidemics attracts. From mad cow disease and bird flu to SARS and West Nile virus, we've seen a pattern emerge in which diseases are presented to us as if they're the Black Death only to find they're nothing of the sort. In relation to swine flu, we've seen sensationalist hack reporting - get an expert to say a scary number and present it as if this is a real possibility rather than the worst case scenario. More often, we've seen more balanced reporting, but as part and parcel of coverage that amounts to overkill, and quite often highly speculative overkill. Alongside some lazy reporting, there are plenty of individual journalists producing well-informed copy but in the context of over-the-top, blanket coverage, the subtleties are often lost.

Journalists need to take some responsibility for all of this. If the truth is that we don't have any real idea what is happening, then we should say 'we don't know' and we shouldn't make it the top story. We live in a time when judging what is important is tricky, and the media plays an important role in that. If a story is the lead item for days on end, then it doesn't matter really how cautious and balanced the actual content, the implication - the body language of the story, if you like - suggests we should be alarmed. If this is repeated from one health panic to the next, then a certain amount of cynicism is bound to result.

But I'd also like to make a few points, which I've only really got time to assert, to put this situation into context because it would totally wrong to blame the media alone for what has happened.

Firstly, we need to separate the reality of disease - which may or may not be serious - from our predisposition to expect the worst. We live in a period where risk and fear have become central to the way we understand the world. We seem to be almost on the lookout for the next bad thing that might happen. Not only do we treat every new potential disease as an epidemic, we have stretched the term epidemic to include things that are not in themselves diseases. I think the way in which an average increase in weight in the Western world has been redefined as the obesity epidemic is symptomatic of this outlook.

In her book, AIDS and its Metaphors, the late American commentator Susan Sontag described this very well. She talked about the 'striking readiness of so many to envisage the most far-reaching of catastrophes'. This was not so much Apocalypse Now as Apocalypse From Now On.

Secondly, we need to understand the different ways in which the authorities respond. In terms of practical action - monitoring infections, analysing new pathogens, taking steps to create a vaccine and so forth - I think this is all fairly sensible. I think we may have been mugged about on the size of the Tamiflu order but that's about it. On the other hand, the decision to issue a leaflet to every home in the country was a waste of time and money - the contents of it were trite and unhelpful because we weren't yet in a position to give a sensible assessment of how dangerous swine flu might be. It was a matter of being seen to be doing something, even if the result was likely to be more alarm.

As for the debate about what phase the infection was at and whether we officially have a pandemic was both ridiculous and surreal. Most people quite reasonably assume that 'pandemic' means something akin to 'uncontrollable plague' rather than merely being a description of how wide the geographic spread of infection has become. And the talk of phase 5 and phase 6 is rather like the escalation of a nuclear incident to Defcon 1. Nor was Margaret Chan's comment that swine flu is a threat to all of humanity particularly constructive.

But governments and health quangos rely on winding us up ever so often to justify their existence.

If we are to stop this kind of thing, we need to have a much more honest and hard-headed approach to outbreaks like this. I believe that the media and the authorities need to take considerable responsibility for failings in this area. To overhype disease is simply counterproductive, both in relation to whatever the current problem is and in ensuring cooperation and speedy responses from the public in the future. But tackling the wider climate in which we appear overly sensitive to every kind of risk is going to be much harder.'

One common theme of the discussion afterwards was the controversy over the naming of H1N1/Swine/Mexican flu. Mike Gannatt, a former high-level press secretary and risk communicator within government, speculated that perhaps we needed some kind of automated naming system. I suggested we copy the hurricane model, and give new influenza viruses names, in which case this one could be Influenza Derek.

Sadly, the woman from the WHO in the audience didn't realise I was joking and said she would bring the suggestion back to her bosses... Still, if you can name the thing that flooded New Orleans 'Katrina', who's to say it's a stupid idea?

Mumbai after 26/11

I visited Mumbai in January and wrote this based on my experiences and the debate in the run up to the Indian elections.

One of the great tourist attractions in Mumbai is the Gateway of India, the Arc de Triomphe-like arrival point for ships to the city, built in 1924 as an expression of Britain's imperial might and the scene of the final departure of British troops in February 1948. But the backpackers and travellers tend to be looking across the road these days, at the magnificent and somewhat discomfiting sight of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, the most famous landmark of 'India's 9/11'.

The attacks on the 26 November - '26/11' as it's now called here - have left surprisingly few scars on the Taj. While the old part of the hotel is closed as the extensive internal damage is assessed and repaired, externally there is little sense that this was the site of a pitched gun battle a few weeks ago. Indeed, the modern, tower extension to the Taj reopened in December, less than four weeks after the attacks.

The weird sensation of being somewhere so familiar from our TV screens is even stronger at Leopold's Café on nearby Colaba Causeway. But the attacks have hardly scared the punters away. Indeed, my guide - once a regular at Leopold's in her college days - bemoaned the fact that even on a Tuesday night it was now hard to get a seat and we were crammed into a corner of the upstairs bar underneath a big TV screen. Clearly, being able to say you've eaten at the (slightly) bullet-scarred café is a selling point to the regular stream of backpackers passing through town.

Elsewhere, life in Mumbai seems barely touched. The relentless noise of beeping horns provides a soundtrack to a city that is the very embodiment of 'bustling'. Yet the media is full of debate about what is to be done about terrorism. India Today demands that the country should 'Declare War on Terror. Indeed, every big newspaper seems to be campaigning against terror in one way or another. The big stories of the last couple of weeks have been a dispute affecting petrol supplies, a couple of major financial scandals and the awards success of Slumdog Millionaire. But the constant underlying theme has been the issue of terrorism.

Indeed, the calls for action predated the November attacks - and no wonder. According to the US National Counterterrorism Center, over 1,000 people died in terrorist attacks in 2007 alone. In September 2008, following bombings in the capital, Delhi, which killed 20 people, the media seemed united in demanding tough legislation. The Hindustan Times demanded that 'firmer anti-terror laws are put in place - never mind where the suggestions come from', while the Times of India suggested that 'At this time of crisis, some of the liberties that we take for granted might have to be curbed to ensure that terrorists, who follow no norms and rules, are effectively restrained'. The cries have only got louder since 26/11.

This bunker mentality has asserted itself in everyday life in sometimes farcical ways. At Churchgate Station - where 1,500 commuters pass in and out every minute during rush hour - walk-through metal detectors have been installed. While the lights on top flicker from 'WALK' to 'STOP' as a constant stream of passengers set off the detectors, the police stand around unable to usefully do anything. Stopping everyone would be impractical. Indeed, during my travels round India, these metal detectors seem to have become the must-have accessory for almost every government building, posh hotel or shopping mall - and they're all pretty much useless.

More ominous is a distinct anti-Pakistan mood, reinforced by politicians looking for an easy explanation for the 26/11 attacks, most notably with the 'dossier' of evidence linking the attacks to Pakistan presented by the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, two weeks ago. Even if the attacks originated in Pakistan, it seems unlikely that the terrorists had official Pakistan government backing. But that hasn't prevented populist hawks from turning up the anti-Pakistan rhetoric. Neel Mukherjee, writing in the Guardian, illustrated this trend with the case of a Mumbai bookstore whose owner had had a friendly visit from local cops 'suggesting' that it might be wise to remove Pakistani authors from his shelves.

The reason for my visit to India - to act as a judge for the schools debating competition Debating Matters - provided an ideal opportunity to talk to Mumbai residents about the attacks. Chatting with teachers and students from the suburb of Thane, they were in accord that life had got back to normal almost straightaway. Like people in New York and London, there was a certain amount of nervousness about future attacks. So, one parent asked in a debate on terrorism and civil liberties what - if anything - could be done to protect her children while they were out at the mall. But people had to get on with their lives. As one fellow judge joked, Mumbai seems so chaotic it's a wonder anyone noticed an attack going on.

Another interesting viewpoint was provided by another debating judge, a senior Mumbai policeman. His biggest headache was the traffic arrangements for the forthcoming Mumbai Marathon rather than another act of terrorism. But he was also concerned at trends towards a greater involvement of the military in day-to-day life: 'Armies are for borders; cops are for cities', he told me. In New Delhi, uniformed men with automatic weapons seemed almost as commonplace as the metal detectors.

While ordinary Indians have been getting on with their lives, many outsiders seem to have lost their nerve. One distinguished doctor I met in New Delhi, who preferred not to be named, complained that a major international medical conference he had helped to organise, which was due to take place in the city next month and had taken three years to prepare, had been cancelled after the sponsors got cold feet. The irony is that a conference that would have been a thousand miles and three months removed from the 26/11 attacks has been shifted to the apparent safety of Washington DC, scene of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. The disgruntled conference organiser told me that a number of other big conventions had been cancelled.

India is a huge country with multiple political problems, many the legacy of the disastrous carve-up of the sub-continent when the British left, 60 years ago. While ordinary Indians may feel even more cynical about politics and politicians than their counterparts in the West, the government is still accountable to them at the ballot box and India is a largely open society. The frenetic and sometimes alarming behaviour of drivers whizzing around Mumbai's crowded roads are testament to a society keen to get on - in a hurry. It would be a tragedy if, with national elections expected in April or May, people are bullied into sacrificing more of that freedom in the name of dubious measures to 'tackle terror'.

Terry Wogan: je ne regrette rien

In May, I wrote an article having a go at Terry Wogan for his relentlessly sardonic commentary on Eurovision, suggesting that we was past his sell-by date and he should pass the reins to a new presenter:

Nul points for Terry Wogan's outburst

Now the BBC has announced that Wogan has indeed said au revoir, I'm almost delighted. The trouble is that Wogan is to be replaced by Graham Norton. This could be a case of out of the frying pan, into the fire. Isn't Eurovision camp enough already?

Recycling is a waste of time (again)

I took part in a debate on BBC Radio Five on Thursday evening on the question of whether recycling is a waste of time. It was prompted by news that the prices of recyclable materials have collapsed because the main customer for them - China - doesn't want them at a time when other commodity prices have also fallen. The suggestion is that the recyclable waste be stored in the UK till prices rise again.

(For a summary of my views on recycling, see this post.)

The striking thing is that so many of the callers (but by no means all) thought that recycling was a waste of time. It's clear that the reason UK local authorities are having to get out the big stick to force people to do it. Obviously, we're not convinced that it really matters. That's despite the fact that we're constantly told that recycling will 'save the planet' and how we've got to get kids to do it, too. See this clip from the US about making recycling fun for the whole family (yuk):

Susan Blackmore, John Gray and the problem of population

From the 'Free Thinking Festival' in Liverpool, as broadcast on Radio 3's Night Waves. Gray argued that green thinking is dangerous because the usual green prescription - stop using fossil fuels, switch to organic farming, etc - won't work and is politically unrealistic. Most importantly, he sees, following Lovelock, that the Earth is a living thing. Human action may have caused the climate crisis, but human action cannot prevent it from happening.

Side-by-side with emissions, Gray believes there is the problem of the destruction of biosphere which might 'mop up' greenhouse emissions. Industrialisation represents the 'legitimate aspirations' of the people in China and India. We need to adapt to climate change, whose ultimate cause is industrialisation plus the rise of human numbers.

Technical fixes we can move to: nuclear energy (see Finland's decision to go 100 per cent to nuclear); Dutch giving up land to the sea, creating new wetlands. We should consider all non-harmful solutions - biofuels are, for example, intrinsically harmful due to deforestation. Need to use technology to reduce the impact of humans on the Earth over the next 50 years. Environmental tokenism/utopianism will lead to unpleasant phenomena like resource wars.

Sue Blackmore: Like others here, I expected something more Daniel-like. The real unsaid thing, the real free-thinking thing that needs to be said is that the fundamental problem is that there are too many people.

John Gray: I did say that.

Sue Blackmore: Yes, you did, but you didn't grasp the nettle and nobody can because what it means and I find myself in the situation is thinking is 'for the planet's sake I hope we have bird flu or some other thing that will reduce the population because otherwise we're doomed. As a humanitarian person I want to have cures and to have people not die. I don't know what to do about this problem. But at least it's a Free Thinking festival and we need to say that's the problem. What do we do?

Presenter: Okay, that's the well-known neuroscientists Dr Sue Blackmore. A brief answer to that.

John Gray: Well, people want forbidden thoughts, they say this is all too conformist and we've heard it all before. I think we've heard one now. Do I share it? Only in part. There's a twofold cause I said in the present situation. It's worldwide industrialisation plus the present level of human numbers which is unsustainable. But I don't see the solution to that in bird flu or some other catastrophe. First of all, because that involved cataclysmic suffering but also because it would take down an awful lot of the other lifeforms because it would be associated with terrible wars. What we've really got to think of is a way in which we can get through the next 50 years and at that point, I believe, population will begin to trail off as it has done and is beginning to do in many parts of the world.

Ethan Greenhart's protest song - against humanity

On 8 October, Ethan Greenhart, ethical columnist for online publication spiked, and his Gaia Choir made an impromptu and wildly popular appearance at Ambrosia's Vegan Cafe on the outskirts of Brighton to sing the song that they believe provides the solution to the credit crunch:

'Why Won't The Humans Die Out?' is available to listen to on spiked today:

Ethan sings the Humanity Blues

The song is also available on YouTube