Turning Over a New Leaf

The recent burst of good weather may have misled us all as to where we are on the great wheel of life. We're in September. Schools are back. Apples are ripening. Night comes earlier. Often the most settled time of year, and certainly very pleasant now.
It's a little early for trees to be turning yellow, though, and here and there they are. This is a great deal more obvious in Britain, where trees have been turning since the middle of last month.
The reason, say environmentalists, is pollution. Two months ago a joint EC and UN survey reported that more than 58% of Britain's trees were moderately or severely afffected by the "early autumn" blight. The numbers are increasing, and the educated guess is that over 90% are affected to some degree.
Writing in a recent issue of the Observer, Geoffrey Lean commented that this made Britain the worst hit of the 34 countries surveyed, which included such blackspots as Czechoslovakia and Germany. The problem with the kind of pollution involved, of course, is that it is frequently sourced elsewhere, like the fallout from Chernobyl, which had catastrophic implications thousands of miles away.
Chernobyl was, however, one single incident, albeit with extremely longlasting results. Industrial pollution like acid rain is constant as the wind. It never stops. And it travels. This was underlined by the outburst from the Norwegian Environment Minister Thorbjoern Bernsten the other week, in which he labelled his British counterpart John Gummer "the biggest drittsekk (shitbag) I have met."
He also used the words impudent, maddening, disgusting, arrogant and ignorant.
As you might have guessed, Norwegians are convinced that, as well as pumping out 3.6 million tons of sulphur and 2.8 million tons of nitrogen oxides on its own countryside from power stations and cars, Britain is also Europe's biggest exporter of acid rain.
They have used the term "chemical warfare" and maintain that one third of their sulphur pollution comes from the UK. The British, as may be divined from Mr Bernsten's unparliamentary language, blithely refuse to accept any responsiblity for their emissions overseas. "Fog in the Channel, Continent Cut Off," as the old headline went.
Insularity aside, they are also opposed to controls that would, as they see it, undermine industry's competitiveness. They derogated from the EC Social Charter for the same reason. Ireland is comparatively lucky, when compared to Norway. The prevailing climatic conditions take the worst of the pollution away from our shores.
The maddening thing is, of course, that recovery is possible, and on a global scale too, as may be seen from the recent indications that the world-wide build-up of ozone-depleting chemicals has slowed substantially.
This reverse is being attributed to industry's unexpectedly rapid cut in the production of the harmful chemicals." A beautiful case study of science and public policy working well," is how one of the experts described it.
The worst ozone depletion will occur at the end of this century, when the gases already released will find their way to the outer limits of the stratosphere. The recovery begins then, although it will take several generations for the ozone to return to natural levels.
These timeframes remind one of the enormity of the issues: the analogy is made of stopping and turning a large ship in a narrow space. But it can be done.
Another charming and topical example comes from Germany, where, ZOOROPA notwithstanding, the many thousands of abandoned Trabant cars have become a positive nuisance. I don't know if you have ever walked along a street in the old German Democratic Republic before the Wall came down. If you had, you'd have seen these little beasts beetling about in a haze of blue smoke, belched out of their farty little two-stroke engines.
The Trabant had its day, of course, but that was in another generation. Another time-frame. Now it can't even be scrapped because to do so would release too many toxins. If burned, they would release dioxins into the air (remember Agent Orange?) and if buried they would rot, releasing the same poison into the soil.
The cars aren't made of steel, you see. The bodies contain cellulose and phenol-formaldehyde resins. Thank crunchy the Industry Research Centre for Biotechnology in east Berlin is close to a bacterial solution.
They have already patented microbes that can digest some of the resins, and now they're trying to break down the rest. In about two years they hope to have a process in which the carriage of the cars will be reduced to a few pounds of residue.
It is the same beautifully simple solution that you find being applied on progressive farms throughout Europe. One leading cheesemaker in Ireland recycles all farm waste in a digester, which produces methane which heats all the agri-industrial buildings, and runs a generator. It also provides pellets of high quality fertiliser. Self-sufficiency indeed.
Such simple bacterial solutions may also have to be found for another proliferating nuisance throughout Europe, a small monster that harks back to the age of the dinosaurs. I speak of the terrapin, a vicious flesh-eating reptile which is usually bought as a tiny little cutie that fits in the palm of your hand, but which can develop into a two-foot long/wide savage that weighs up to 75 lb and eats 10 pounds of beef a day.
Terrapins, of course, are also known as turtles, and they were and are bought in their thousands for children as pets. Trouble is, like lots of pets bought in haste, people grow weary of them, and dump them.
No joke this, and no urban myth either. Turtles have naturalised in France, Spain, Italy and Greece, threatening local wildlife and unsuspecting humans alike. "A highly aggressive reptile and efficient eating machine which will certainly take a bite if two pink toes pass before it," a keeper in London Zoo is quoted as saying in The Independent on Sunday.
And they do. It has become quite a problem in the South of France in particular, where people swimming in rivers are liable to have their dangly bits nibbled by these vicious brutes.
There are some in the South of England, but numbers are small. The rest of these islands are fairly secure, since our summers are neither long enough nor warm enough for their eggs to hatch. But, of course, if all Septembers start like this September. . .
Now, if only our weather could protect us from having the little fuckers cartooning about on our tellys, we'd be really set.
• The Hog