The Locust Years

A year or so before Hitler invaded Poland, Churchill was giving a speech to the House of Commons entitled “The Locust Years”. It was about the way that Britain had watched the massive military build up of arms in Hitler’s Germany without seemingly realising the danger or doing anything about it – some had even scoffed.

In the middle of the speech he said this:

“The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences - Winston Churchill, November 1936”

This quote was used in "An Inconvenient Truth" and has also been used in the blogosphere by quite a few people who care about climate change (including this one – A Year in a Day) and it fits in well with the main theme of Greg Craven’s book-to-be-published-soon (that I helped a bit with). Risk analysis says it is stupid to wait until everyone is convinced because there are some people who will never be convinced, even if the waters are rising around their necks and the eco-system is failing!