"ENJOY YOURSELF. IT'S LATER THAN YOU THINK"


Even though I'm not a polar bear, at the end of 2007, everything has come to seem increasingly temporary to me and I'm not sure quite how to lay plans. I'm trying to prepare myself psychologically. Above all, I'm trying to lighten up and just to get on with things. That explains the title, from a great old Specials song.

It's been a really bad year for polar bears.

"On Sunday 16 September 2007, the sea ice covering the Arctic ocean melted back to a record low point. It has always melted back in the summer, but in recent years it has retreated further and further, to new lows, strongly suggesting the influence of climate change. The 2007 retreat, however, shattered the previous record, set only two years earlier, by a quite colossal amount, an amount so enormous as to be scarcely credible. It exceeded the September 2005 low point by another 22 per cent – an area of 1.2 million square kilometres, or more than 385,000 square miles. This represents an extra area of ice five times the size of the United Kingdom. Gone in a single summer. If you consider that and you don't think the world is rapidly warming up, what do you need to convince you?" Michael McCarthy, The Independent, 28.12.07

The main event of the year was this, and the weak (but not wholly disappointing) response of the UN Climate conference in Bali. With a potential rise of 6.4 degrees in global temperatures by the end of the century, which would make life on the planet unviable, (source: IPCC Report) what should my response be?

And then there's the - potentially - even more urgent question. What happens if the oil runs out? Despite the awful problems with biofuels, I still want to know (very selfishly) whether they can lubricate mechanical parts, power planes, and be used in the manufacture of plastics. Politicians have largely avoided talking about the potential scarcity of oil from about 2015 onwards, probably because, compared with global warming, we aren't even close to consensus on this. But you have to think. (Don't you? Don't you?) Will we be catapulted within a couple of decades back to an almost pre-modern (static, localised) society? Will the internet and other media work in a society where oil is unavailable or twice as expensive? Will technology and transport be the exclusive preserve of the very rich? At the very least, a huge hike in oil prices must lead to an unprecedented economic recession. As for the other consequences, they're hard to see. I'm not an economist. But jobs, house prices, the whole social order are going to change. My sector, teaching EFL, will shrink drastically with any recession in international trade.

I may be crazy. I think this because almost no one else is talking about it! This is what it must feel like to be mad. But I can't pretend that prospects like these don't overshadow most of my hopes as I look to 2008 and beyond. Ultimately it feels like planning a last gasp holiday, or a final fling, just before the shit hits the fan. There will be last gasps and final flings in 2008.

To lighten up for a moment, here's my other review of 2007:

BEST MOMENT
I loved everything about Zurich, especially looking down my street to the mountains beyond. Also seeing the turquoise waters at Plitvice for the first time, on a photograph and then for real.

FILMS
Atonement (not seen until 20th Jan 2008)
The Lives Of Others
This is England
Notes On A Scandal
The Last King Of Scotland

BEST THING I SAW
rewatched Our Friends In The North

ALBUMS
King Creosote - Bombshell (for great songwriting)
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand (for the voices)
The Shins - Wincing The Night Away (the melodic hooks)
and the Radiohead album turned out to be great, after about the 5th hearing

GIGS
Madness at the Sziget!
Roger Waters in Budapest (for those timeless songs, and how he stitched them together into a whole)
Gogol Bordello at A38, Budapest (for the sheer energy)

BEST THINGS I HEARD ALL YEAR
Shearwater - Palo Santo
The Good The Bad & The Queen - Herculean
Simian Mobile Disco - Sleep Deprivation
And the best album, not from 2007 I don't think, was The Rough Guide To The Music of Hawaii.

MISCELLANEOUS EVENTS
DELTA
Led Zeppelin reunion (I wasn't there, I want them to tour)
Facebook (I am there, and wondering if the novelty will fade in 2008)

BOOKS
Mervyn Peake - Titus Groan
Martin Amis - London Fields (both of these for the imaginative scope, the characters and the prose)
Chris Abbott, Paul Rogers & John Sloboda - Beyond Terror (for the facts. If there are such things, and it's a moot point, then here they are, and in a little over 100 pages.)