The number of cyclists is soaring … something I’d confirm from anecdotal observation: “In London, trips by bike have increased by 50 per cent in five years to 450,000 per day while figures obtained by The Independent show use of the National Cycle Network, covering 10,000 miles of urban and rural pathways, rose last year by 15 per cent to 232 million journeys.”

All we’ve got to do now is a lot more work on cycle tracks, and on making railways, and buses, much more cycle-friendly. I was pleased to read in the brochure of the Hadrian’s Wall bus that it took cycles. Then, when I expected to rely on it, the driver, very apologetically, told me he was under strict instructions not to take cycles. I will be writing a stiff letter of complaint, but it is all too typical.

Not all cyclists are super-athletes, and they often would like to combine cycling with other forms of transport. If not given the opportunity, it will only put more cars on the roads.

The people of  it’s-the-suburbs-really-but-let’s-pretend-it-is-the-countryside Thaxted, Essex, put out on average the most carbon dioxide per household of any area in the UK.

The average household in leafy, tidy Uttlesford spews 8,092kg of carbon dioxide each year, more than double the comparatively clean, green dwellings of Camden in London, which on average produce just 3,255kg of CO2.

…Each year the average home here produces CO2 emissions equivalent to taking a Boeing 747 to Australia and back.

… “There’s all these huge pads out in the sticks where they leave their lights on all night and their big tellies on. That’s where it’s happening,” said Joe Hobbs, an architect.

The story goes on to say that those who have tried to do the right thing in terms of installing solar and wind power have run into problems with conservation and planning rules. The area obviously just doesn’t get it; all those lovely twisted old wood-framed buildings with thatched roofs won’t survive long underwater.

Then, you do have to feel sorry for this guy:

AN AIRLINE has apologised to a teacher after a short flight home to Manchester from France took more than 30 hours on a zigzagging journey on two aircraft, two coaches and a taxi, passing through five airports in three countries.

But then again, he was travelling from Angers, in the Loire Valley. It probably would have taken two hours on the train to Paris (if that) and three hours on Eurostar – and he would have been home probably quicker than the plane, even had things gone according to plan. And with far lower carbon emmissions. As a teacher, he should know better.

Finally, Australia has been hit by “drought” again. I put the word in quote marks, because when I studied agricultural science many years ago, I was told the definition of drought is exceptional weather conditions. Yet large parts of Australia are, according to farmers and officials, in “drought” for much of the time.

In fact, they are in denial about the actual normal (and quite possibly likely to get drier with global warming) climate of Australia. They’re trying to grow crops and run animals – at least the wrong sort of animals – in places where more often than not they’ll be in trouble.

Unfortunately I haven’t got a copy of it, but I once wrote an article interviewing an academic who maintained the only sensible form of “farming” across a majority of Australia was running kangaroos – leave the native pastures to maintain their own natural balance, let the roos have the run of the place (they have soft feet, not the hard hooves of the non-native ungulates, which chop up the soil and cause erosion), and harvest them once a year.

Why, oh why, should Tony Blair have last night come out in favour of nuclear power, effectively killing the yet-to-be-completed energy review of his own government? (Which follows a completed review of just two years ago that dismissed the option.)

Mr Blair’s spokesman said the prime minister was speaking after reading “a first cut” of the Department of Trade and Industry-led review on Monday. He said the country could not rely on one new source to meet the coming energy gap, pointing out that renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, had technical problems…. Mr Blair said: “Essentially, the twin pressures of climate change and energy security are raising energy policy to the top of the agenda in the UK and around the world.

First, to tackle the climate change side of the equation: this site illustrates with great clarity that nuclear energy is not a carbon-neutral option. Producing nuclear fuels, and building power stations, produces a great deal of it.

You can download a paper from that site that concludes:

The CO2 produced by the full nuclear life cycle is about one half to one third of an equivalent sized gas-fired power station. For low quality ores (less than 0.02% of U₃O₈ per tonne of ore), the CO2 produced by the full nuclear life cycle is EQUAL TO that produced by the equivalent gas-fired power station.

As for the “technical problems” – it is worth restating that most renewables are not “new” technology, particularly in the case of solar and wind. About 28 years ago in Australia, my family put a solar hot water heater on the house, which worked perfectly well, without any dramas at all, for the 14 or so years after that for which we continued to own the house.

Certainly both solar and wind power do not provide a steady supply, but there are ways of managing that; tidal and wave power, for example, are going to be predictable and can be intermixed with them.

And as the South-East of England is finding also with water, we might have to give up the expectation that you can just at any time use vast quantities of resources for no good purpose – which is why energy conservation is the other side of this equation.

So why did Mr Blair do this? Good question.

Perhaps it is partly an age thing – he is of the generation of the first nuclear power stations, which promised a magic cure of “free”, endless power (as we now knnow a myth). Plus, as a man at that stage of political career obsessed with “his legacy”, he likes the idea of a country dotted with huge, hideous, monuments to him.

As someone on BBC Radio Four said this morning, had the Emperor Claudius brought nuclear power to Britain with his Roman legions, the waste from his power plants would still be highly dangerous and have to be guarded and contained.

Some legacy.