Among scientists and politicians, the global warming deniers have almost disappeared, though the latter do not seem inclined to do anything about it. But several Fleet Street pundits haven't got the message, rather like those Japanese soldiers in the Borneo jungle who thought the Second World War was still going on years after it was over. The hot weather brought the pundits into the open with fixed bayonets.
In the Times, Ross Clark insisted the "record" July temperature of 36.5°C at Wisley, Surrey the other day had been easily exceeded at Tonbridge in 1868. This had been "wiped from the historical record", because "it is highly inconvenient for the global warming lobby".
In the London Evening Standard, A N Wilson said he'd like to believe in global warming, but didn't. In the Sun, Jeremy Clarkson said "respected scientists" had warned us earlier in the year that we'd all die from bird flu (actually, they didn't; it was red-top hacks), and now they were telling us global warming would kill us (to a red-top columnist, "scientists", like "asylum-seekers", are a single, undifferentiated entity). The Daily Mail's science editor, Michael Hanlon, praised the American devotion to air conditioning and enjoined us Brits to stop treating it "with a puritan disdain". This, noted the headline, would get "the Greens hot under the collar", since it would bring summer fuel consumption to about the same level as winter. What fun!
Some columnists warned of the dire consequences of raising the price of air travel, a major contributor to global warming through its use of untaxed fuel. "International tourism would once again become the privilege of the rich," lamented the Independent's Hamish McRae. On the same day, David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, proposed carbon rationing. If there was an intelligent discussion of this idea in any paper, I missed it.
The Independent had one of its trademark front pages on global warming. But the downmarket papers, which have had lots of practice at scaring their readers, often made a better fist at highlighting the downside of this glorious summer.
For example, the Sunday Express imagined life in 2060. Children would die in parked cars, London Underground would shudder to a halt, and many old people would expire. Meanwhile, the Guardian had to admit that, even in the 2080s, summer deaths among the elderly would be easily offset by a drop in cold-related winter deaths. Moreover, we could grow peaches on the south coast and French grape varieties in the Lake District.
And that's the trouble with our increasingly long, hot summers. To the British, they are the most tangible evidence of global warming but, despite the odd night of unbearable humidity, most people rather enjoy them. "Are we prepared to live in a country with the same temperatures as Bordeaux?" asked the Observer. Since many Britons take their holidays in Bordeaux, the answer is surely yes.
Small is now beautiful
The Guardian's shrunken G2 section, much reviled when it first appeared last year, now gets rave reviews - from the metropolitan chattering classes, at any rate. Personally, I always liked it. If you read as many papers as I do, even tabloids make your arms ache after a while, and something as easy to handle as G2 comes as a relief.
But what accounts for its new popularity, which seems to date from when Katharine Viner took over as editor in February? It is partly the application of a simple, but surprisingly rare, daily editing skill: judging what will be on people's minds the following morning, and finding a fresh way of writing about it. But Viner has also steered the section away from its old self-conscious wheezes, which often bordered on schoolboy silliness. Instead, she has opted for something that, amid countless press features about motherhood, male identity and so on, seemed almost extinct: proper, in-depth reporting, done with wit and insight.
Here are two recent examples. First, Natasha Walter wrote a four-page report on how middle-class parents get their children into church schools on false pretences. This is a much-discussed subject, but I have not previously seen it reported in such telling detail, with named schools, interviews with parents and reliable statistics. It will now be harder for the churches to deny there is a significant problem.
Second, Stephen Moss wrote on rural poverty. The Independent ran a feature on the same subject. Both were pegged to an official report on the subject. But whereas the Independent relied heavily on the report and its writers showed no signs of having stepped outside London for more than a few minutes, Moss took us on a journey through several Peak District villages. His piece had real texture and made an absorbing read. If newspapers are to survive, we need more like it.
