This is not just a climate emergency. This is an M&S climate emergency
There are, some people say, two sides to every coin. Always a silver lining. Hurrah, say the people whose homes have been flooded or are threatened by wildfires. Let us eat English asparagus.
A full page newspaper advert from M&S caught my eye earlier this week. It proclaimed joyfully that the asparagus season had arrived early.
“Thanks to our wonderful farmers, the Chinn family in Wye Valley, perfectly tender British asparagus has come early to M&S”, it said. “Enjoy it while it’s here.”
Now I have nothing against the Chinn family, but I think we should also give some credit to people like the Amazonian farmers who have been busily chopping down rainforests to help warm our planet by the 1.5 degrees needed to improve the Herefordshire climate. Let’s hear it for the Bolsonero family of Brazil.
There’s always something to be grateful for. I’m quite partial to a bit of asparagus.
And I can reveal a guilty secret. I was pretty pleased when I discovered Halfpenny Green, the vineyard just up the road from here near Wolverhampton, is now producing a half-decent red wine.
For many years English wine has been challenging the quality of white wines in northern Europe. Now our local vineyards can pitch themselves against the warmer climes of southern France, Italy and Spain. Cheers!
It’s also getting warmer in Switzerland.
The same newspaper with the M&S advert carried a story about the landmark ruling of the European Court of Human Rights against the Swiss government for failing to protect its citizens against climate change. A group of older women who brought the case said their government’s climate inaction put them at risk of dying during heatwaves.
“Future generations are likely to bear an increasingly severe burden of the consequences of present failures and omissions to combat climate change,” the court president said in her ruling.
Things have clearly moved on from the notion, perhaps 10 years ago, when you could get away with the glib response that global warming was a good thing because, here in the UK, we would have hotter summers. Blue skies, buckets and spades for the full 8 weeks of the summer holidays.
Some places are getting hotter. The permafrost is melting, but seriously who would consider Siberia for a holiday right now?
There are examples in the newspapers every day of how the global climate is changing. Even within our own little island there are winners and losers.
While it might be a little milder in the Wye Valley and Wolverhampton, farmers across Wales are struggling. As the atmosphere warms it can hold more moisture. The Met Office estimates that 27% more rainfall fell in the UK last month compared to an average March.
And according to a report commissioned by WWF Cymru this is costing Welsh farmers as much as £175m a year.
Puffin Produce, based in Pembrokeshire, provides potatoes and vegetables for the major UK supermarkets but has been hit by the prolonged rainfall.
Farm manager Charlie Felstead told the BBC: "We still have potatoes in the ground that were supposed to be harvested last August or September and it's going to be a struggle to get them out.
"We're trying to plant next year's crop. We've only got 20 acres in the ground where there should be hundreds of acres by now.”
Each spring in the Shropshire Hills Welsh border town of Clun a battle is re-enacted between the forces of nature. Will the May Queen triumph?
“The contemporary festival,” the organisers say, “draws on myths, fairy tales and folklore, and re-imagines the time-old tale of season change.”
After the battle is won, merriment continues on the fields below the ancient castle.
But not this year.
After what they call the wettest winter for a very long time, the Green Man Festival Committee have given in to the forces of nature and cancelled the event.
As always, it’s not all bad news. Despite a possible question mark over its department store in the county town of Shrewsbury, M&S has revealed plans for a new food hall just down the road from Clun, in Ludlow.
Get your asparagus while you can.