Peter Jackson column

Sep 29 2005 By Peter Jackson, The Journal

I now believe there is life on Mars. Last week photographs from Nasa's spacecraft Mars Global Surveyor showed that deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near the planet's south pole have shrunk for three summers in a row.

This, according to Nasa, shows that the planet is undergoing climate change, or Martian global warming.

Now, I reason that just as rising temperatures on Earth must be caused by the activities of us earthlings, so Martians must be responsible for the red planet hotting up.

Of course, that's just a cheap shot on my part. In fact, even if global warming has more to do with events in the Solar System outside our control, we still face the problem of replacing fossil fuels, not so much because they are causing global warming, but because they are running out.

We have seen only too clearly what Middle Eastern conflict and hurricanes can do to oil prices and this is because of supply constraints.

Now the Met Office is warning of one of the hardest winters for 10 years and it is feared that this will mean some industries having gas supplies cut off. CBI chief Sir Digby Jones has warned the Government that the UK only has enough reserves to supply companies for 11 days.

With restricted supply comes higher prices and there are predictions that by the first quarter of next year, gas prices will have increased by 166%.

I'm sure that once this winter is out of the way, once the Gulf has recovered from Katrina, and if some sort of stability returns to Iraq, then we will see prices start to fall back.

But things will never be the same again.

We have been warned and some solution must be found to our long-term energy needs.

This solution will be nuclear power - I'm pretty sure of that and I'm sure the Government is.

Sadly, at the moment it seems unable to grasp the nettle, just as it seems unable to grasp the nettle with pensions or council tax.

Let's hope this is just temporary, that the Cabinet is will get over its internal politicking and tackle some of the big issues. Otherwise it won't be a question of whether there's life on Mars, but whether there's still life in New Labour.