Even the climate-change deniers may have to stop and think twice now. The British tabloid The Sun threw its hat into the ring this week (20.01.09) with a special ‘SOS Planet Earth’ supplement  (‘The Earth – We Love It’). And, as politicians and pop stars alike know, when The Sun takes things seriously (or as seriously as its sub-editors’ puns permit) then its three million or so readers do, too.

The supplement features an interview with former US President Bill Clinton, who is apparently at the ‘forefront’ of the battle against global warming through his Clinton Climate Initiative. Clinton’s scheme, aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions in cities around the world, hasn’t had the impact that his Vice President Al Gore’s high-profile documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, has had, but even if he is jumping on the green bandwagon, I’m not complaining.  So long as it’s a hybrid and he checks the tyre pressures first . . .

 Battling climate change seems to be ‘the thing’ for former world leaders to do. Once they’re left office, anyway. On 21 January, The Guardian newspaper reported that ex-PM Tony Blair had addressed the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi, where he had called on Gordon Brown and other political leaders not to allow the financial crisis to get in the way of combating climate change.

I agree with Blair wholeheartedly, but if I was Gordon I might be muttering through gritted teeth that it’s a lot easier to say that from the sidelines. Wisdom after the event is all very well but now that Tony’s seen the (green) light, perhaps he might like to leave off some of the foreign holidays he’s always been so partial to (and famously saw no reason to cut back on while in office, effectively undermining any pretence of being a role model).

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem very likely that many people, politicians or public, will be doing that, what with the Government now officially endorsing the third runway at Heathrow. The sceptics love that, of course; to them it’s confirmation that Brown’s only Green when he wants to be, ergo global warming’s merely a scary tale to justify wringing more taxes out of us.

Environmentalists, meanwhile, are tearing their hair out at the Government’s dual standards and the Conservatives (and Lib Dems) are promising to revoke the decision if they win the next General Election. That ought to be an eco vote-winner, but I’m still not convinced the Conservatives are as green as they pretend to be. David Cameron is, and he’s got the wind turbine to prove it; however, as far as I can tell, your typical climate-change denier is a hard-line, dyed-in-the-wool, small-town Tory who thinks that wind turbines are as useless as chocolate teapots.

I don’t know if these types read The Sun – and they almost certainly shun The Guardian – but one would hope they regard New Scientist as neutral ground. In last week’s issue, Sir Nicholas Stern wrote that ‘the risks and potential costs’ of climate change are ‘even greater’ than he originally recognised when he published The Stern Review in 2006 and that we need to adopt low-carbon technologies now if we are to stand any hope of stabilising emissions at 500 ppm.

‘That's if we are to keep down the risks of potentially catastrophic impacts which could result from average global temperatures rising 4 °C or more above pre-industrial levels,’ he writes. The good news is that he thinks it can be done, if the UNFCCC endorses an 80 per cent cut by 2050 compared with 1990.

The bad news is that Coolio on Celebrity Big Brother (Channel 4) apparently isn’t too impressed with climate change predictions and we’ve been left with BB housemateTerry Christian to put the case for global warming. Still, a 55-second exchange in the Big Brother garden is almost as good as a supplement in The Sun for taking the debate up (or down) a level, and Christian seemed to have a pretty clear idea of what’s going on.

Whereas Coolio’s contribution was to state that we are entering the ‘Age of Aquarius’, Christian’s response was: ‘ It only takes a one degree shift in temperature to actually make the whole thing go whaaapp…’

Maybe Sir Nicholas Stern should try that. ‘Carbon capture and sequestration now, or we’ll all go “whaaapp”.’ It might have more of an impact. He could also try using a few puns. The Sun reckons greenhouse gases are ‘Era To Stay’ . It may be a Thaw Point with the sceptics but if it works, don’t knock it. I’m certainly not going to.

 ‘The Earth: We Love It’. Says it all.