Chris Packham’s suggestions to save the world

On Monday 2 August, the BBC Today programme offered its ‘Countdown to COP26’. For the rest of the month, Amol Rajan announced, Chris Packham would give us ‘a different suggestion’ about climate change EVERY DAY. I make that 26 Packham slots — Sunday being Today-free — on the main national news magazine programme. Chris’s Day One suggestion to address the ‘colossal, planet-threatening mess that we find ourselves in’ was that everyone should buy an alarm clock (second-hand if possible to save on emissions), set it to wake up 15 minutes earlier and devote that quarter of an hour to doing something helpful, rather as we did, he said, when we abolished slavery. This would amount, if everyone obeyed Chris, to ‘258 million days of people power’ emitted per year. ‘Come on then,’ said Amol to listeners, ‘set that alarm clock.’

Resisting the temptation to obey and gain 15 minutes to start my car and belch extra carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, I listened to Packham Day Two.