The Writing's on the Wall

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If you've walked or driven past the British High Commission or Ashok Hotel in Chanakyapuri, New Delhi recently, you might have noticed 600 feet of graffiti down our wall. If you couldn't quite believe your eyes and decided you should double back for a second look you might have noticed it wasn't graffiti at all, but a mural about climate change - those of you more observant than I am, might not have needed that second look.

The wall depicts two alternative futures for India. On one side, a future of dangerous climate change, in which the average global temperature has risen by four degrees or more by the end of this century.

A future in which floods and droughts, desertification and crop loss, displacement of people and loss of biodiversity have all increased. The other side of the wall represents a world in which the global community has acted together to keep the global temperature rise within a two degree threshold - a safer, more prosperous and nicer world to live in.

Actions our Governments take at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen this December could decide which future we'll live in - so we put the slogan "time to choose" in between these two scenarios. And as we felt that nobody could express the idea better that we all have a stake in the decisions to be made in Copenhagen, we borrowed one of my favourites of Gandhiji's many great quotations: "Be the change you want to see in the world."

Those of you who aren't just round the corner from the British High Commission can see the mural and a short film about its creation on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySyy9X-wF1A or search using the key words 'climate change writing is on the wall' in the search box. You'll even see where my friend Dan got the idea from (if you want a clue, it's in Tehran).

You can also see a photo gallery at: http://ukinindia.fco.gov.uk/en/newsroom/press-centre/MediaLibrary/Images/images-2009/L-WritingIsOnTheWall