There was a parking lot - now there's a peaceful oasis....you got it, you got it...

One of the things I'm passionate about is sustainabilty.

This in part stems from a childhood largely spent being far too serious and pompous for my own good. Whilst other girls were reading Patches and Jackie, I'd be hoovering up New Internationalist, Amnesty International and debating the merits of Fairtrade. For ethical reasons I've been vegetarian more times than I can remember, for reasons of greed and cravings for bacon I've lapsed exactly the same number of times. When the rest of my peer group were enjoying the first Live Aid concert as a great free show, I was arguing with my parents that if they were really serious about ending gloabl poverty, then instead of donating some cash they would bloody well sell the house and make a serious statement of intent.....

Fortunately for all concerned, I've mellowed significantly in older age, and am now enjoying, with bells on, being far less earnest and serious than the up tight adolsecent I once was.

However, one thing that remains an absolute passion for me is caring for the environment in which we live, and treating it with respect and care such that we can continue to live with it. I don't have kids yet, but one of the scenarios I dread is having to explain to some indignant child a couple of decades hence why there's permanent shortages of clean water, no trees and all the food we eat is GM by necessity. And that's not to mention the lack of coral, the reduction in diversity, the permanent damage to our weather systems, the melting ice caps......

The thing that really gets my goat is that all the science, and much of the technology to do something about it, has been known about for decades. Back in the eighties, my inspirational chemistry teacher, Geoff Herbert, laid out in very stark detail exactly what we were doing to the planet. He was right too. Strikes me that if one A level teacher in Stockport understood what was going on, then so do the powers that be, which makes our collective failings to act all the more shameful.

Still, this is now veering dangerously towards an auto-rant. And, in an act that neatly demonstrates the problem, I'm just about to board a flight to Shanghai. But this is only a temporary state of affairs, promise, as shortly I'll be acting to at least make the tiny part of the world that I've got control over sustainable and indeed a peaceful oasis.