save the children. actually, sod them.

Like many development charities, Save The Children see climate change as a major problem for their particular area of concern. The increased numbers of natural disasters it precipitates, and the slower changes too, will force huge migrations of people.

They're tripling their capacity to respond to emergencies and preparing for a proliferation of smaller emergencies that won't hit the headlines. Launching their Legacy of Disasters report in 2007, they said

Over the next decade, Save the Children estimates that up to 175 million children every year will be affected by climate-related natural disasters compared to 125 million a year between 1995 and 2005. Millions more children will be killed, forced to flee their homes and put at risk from hunger, disease and physical or sexual abuse...

Children in developing countries, where there are few adequate warning systems or strategies to lower risk, will also be most affected by 'slow-moving' disasters, including temperature extremes, desertification, and a rise in sea level brought by climate change.

Small-scale disasters, which are typically overlooked by the international community - will also intensify, most affecting vulnerable communities living rurally, on flood plains or on steep slopes at risk of erosion.

Climate change may seem like a far-distant threat to those of us in temperate climes with a buffer zone of welfare and mitigation to deploy. To people elsewhere, it's already a disaster.

So, you'd think anyone who really believed in what Save The Children have to say would try to limit their carbon emissions. As opposed to playing a Save The Children benefit concert and then, without irony, flying by private jet (carbon emissions 25 times greater than a normal plane) to a tax haven for - oh double whammy - the carbon profligacy of Formula 1 motor racing.

Chris de Burgh, the internationally renowned pop star, having just flown in by private jet from a Save the Children Fund concert, threaded his way through the celebrity-packed paddock formed up alongside the quayside at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Unthinking hypocrite? Or first against the wall?