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US President Obama will pitch up in Copenhagen towards the end of the UN Climate Change summit

Apparently, we have just 11 days to save the planet from global warming.  At least, that’s what the telegraph online has informed me this morning.  Steady on chaps, I nearly choked on my Special K Red Berries!

Trust me, it’s difficult enough to get a major UK TV broadcaster to commission a television programme that loosely features climate change as a subject (try not to use the word “green” if at all possible and consider how it affects people with disabilities, seems to be the advice).  But this end of the world element surely makes the whole subject interesting, right?!

I could maybe quickly obtain the world-wide TV rights to the big end of the world event.  Although, thinking about it, maybe it will be just too derivative of existing formats, specifically the big disaster flick, “2012.” And I guess there wouldn’t be much call for a second season.

It’s funny the way the climate change story plays out in the media.  It really is all or nothing.  It’s either nought miles per hour or 200mph, no gentle acceleration through the gears to enable us to get our collective heads around the actual issues.

The Daily Telegraph either reports nothing or says the end of the world is nigh!  And it’s not just the Telegraph, even those smiling sofa bunnies at GMTV have jumped on the bandwagon today – but at least they have put some top tips for saving the planet on their website so viewers need not be too alarmed.

And then we have the faked global warming data allegations levelled at those boffins at the University of East Anglia.  I assume this will eventually win the tag “climategate” if it rumbles on and on (even as I write I know I’m too late with this prediction!).  This is just the kind of dark, sinister and mysterious activity that is guaranteed to have everyone focussed on anything but the real point of it all.

So, what of the key event that’s driving much of the current media flotsam and jetsam about global warming?  The world’s leaders are gathering at The UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

Honestly, I don’t hold out much hope for genuinely focused outputs from this high-level banter. The biggest problem seems to be to me all about encouraging mass engagement of everyone around a set of consistent messages that show a simple set of steps anyone can take to make a difference in a realistic way.

We can’t tell consumers to change to energy efficient light bulbs in one breath, and then tell them world’s going to end in the next. And, on the “climategate” point, it’s terrible that some official boffins may have tampered with some evidence, but surely we are past the point of relying on scientists to still be dishing out and qualifying the cause and effect information?

The longer we wait for and rely upon governments and world leaders to sort things out, it really will be too late.  The power, on this and many other issues in the world today, is literally with the people.