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Take Mark Watson's advice and go green in 2008

I want… to be green
We’d all like to be more eco-friendly – but, in the words of Kermit the Frog, it’s not easy being green. Comedian Mark Watson, with a little help from Al Gore, tries to inspire you…

Attention, scumbags! The time has come to change your ways! Repent or die! I’m sorry. That was the wrong note to start on. What I meant was: Hello, London – hope you had a very merry Christmas and you’re keeping well. We must try to see more of each other in 2008. We’re thinking of buying just to get on the ladder, but the prices are an absolute joke. That was a sad business at the sports day. Etc.

Small-talk aside though, I’ve been asked to steal just a few moments of your time to deliver an address on the subject of the planet’s health. I realise this is as unpromising a prospect as ‘The Green Green Grass’ Christmas special, but as thousands of Londoners will make it through that ordeal, there’s hope that at least a few of you might find time for this.
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Oh, Christmas is all jolly nice fun, no one denies that. ‘Ooh, a Nintendo Wii, brilliant. I’ve always waved my arms in the air compulsively, and now there’ll be an official rationale for it.’ ‘Oh gosh, a new car! Oh Mum and Dad, I love you so much and I’m glad you are so horribly rich.’ ‘Wow, Jeremy Clarkson’s new book – just the thing to reinforce my weary prejudices!’

These are all heartwarming vignettes of the festival we plunge feet-first into every year. Nonetheless, once we’ve had our fun, it’s traditional to spare a thought for someone less fortunate, whether it’s the many victims of Third World poverty, our brave boys out in Iraq, or rock’s forgotten men, The Darkness. I’d like you to extend your pity portfolio to accommodate one of the biggest casualties of the modern world: none other than the world itself.

As you will have read in the papers a lot last year, the planet is on its last legs because of our rapacious, irresponsible lifestyles. That’s the consensus among most of the papers anyway, with a couple of dissenters like the Daily Mail (‘when will these alarmists leave off telling us how to live our lives? Next they’ll be saying we shouldn’t dump radioactive waste in our duckponds!’). Sea levels are rising so rapidly that large areas of land could be underwater in 50 years; the knock-on effects of this, in terms of climate and effect on the world’s population, would be enormous. If the predictions of many climate experts are correct, all of London could be uninhabitable in half a century.

At the start of this year, my standard reaction to all this was ‘Well, that’s a bit of a shame, but I’ve got quite a lot on.’ Over the course of 2007, though, I became convinced by the evidence that global warming is more than a natural phenomenon we’re powerless to affect (like the tides and the seasons), or a temporary scourge that will right itself because of the planet’s resilience (like the current fad for comebacks by boy/girl bands of the ’90s). Having looked at an enormous amount of material on the subject, I decided it was time to try to make some small changes to my life.

The thing is, a lot of stuff you can do for the planet involves giving up stuff that I like – for example flying around, eating exotic imported foods, or deforesting massive areas of natural beauty. But I’ve tried, at least. I cancelled all domestic flights on my tour and took trains instead. I’ve cut down my red meat consumption. I stopped buying wines imported from outside Europe. I reduced the number of taxi rides I took. I made sure phone chargers and TVs and so on were never left on standby. I gave up using plastic bags forever. You know.

And as a result of setting up the online community Crap at the Environment to bring together concerned-but-incompetent people like me, I was invited to attend a three-day training course with Al Gore, the nearly president-turned-enviro-filmstar, during which I was coached to give a version of the lecture he does. I’ll be presenting this lecture, with – wait for it – a bit of a comic slant, in the new year. I’m also going to resolve to cut down my carbon footprint further by getting green energy and efficient lightbulbs in my house, as soon as I’ve got a house (‘the prices are a joke! More pudding?’), and by using more local produce and greener transport and all sorts.

So, if you’re stuck for a new year’s resolution, and thinking: Look, let’s be honest, there’s only so many times I can promise to stop smoking or entertaining lewd thoughts about newsreader Fiona Bruce’, why not try doing one small thing for the environment? It might seem pointless, but unless you are the president of China, small things are all we can do. (If you are, please get in touch, as I might be able to make some more specific suggestions.) And it’s better than nothing, for the same reason a small present – say a Chocolate Orange – on Christmas morning is a whole lot better than an empty flat and a day spent drinking a bottle of whisky alone and crying while watching a DVD of football’s funniest gaffes you bought yourself in a garage on Christmas Eve.

Come on. As a civilisation we have got to the moon, invented cricket, abolished slavery – we can do anything. Anything apart from looking after the place we live in and resisting buying books by Jordan. Let’s at least tackle one of those embarrassments in the coming year. To sum up my message, let’s stop shitting on our own doorstep. And for some readers, who knows, that may double as literal advice.

Mark Watson is at the Bloomsbury Theatre Jan 31 and Feb 1 as part of his national tour (for info visit www.karushi.com). His book ‘Crap at the Environment’ is published by Hodder & Stoughton in June (www.myspace.com/crapattheenvironment).

I want: a new hobby | to be more organised | a new career | a better sex life | a life coach