Can Tony save the world?

Environmental disaster is no longer the stuff of science fiction. Global warming, for example, may seem like a distant threat which can be ignored because, in the long-run, we are all dead. But the threat is real, and it is imminent. If proof is needed, nearly three-quarters of all Britons now tell opinion pollsters that pollution and environmental damage affect their everyday lives. This is how:

Already one in seven children in Britain suffers from asthma, which is exacerbated by air pollution: 13 times as many are now admitted to hospital with the disease each year as in 1960. Air pollution, asthma and other respiratory diseases will rise with the number of cars on the roads. Traffic congestion now ensures that it takes longer to cross central London than in the days of the horse and cart. Ministers will publish plans this autumn to charge motorists to drive into large towns and cities, to combat congestion.

Average sperm counts have fallen by 40 per cent over the last 20 years, and the number of men with impaired fertility has more than trebled. Scientists expect sperm counts to continue to fall until the world faces widespread male infertility.

Fish and chips are under threat. Cod has been declared an endangered species: there are only a third as many of them in the North Sea as 30 years ago, and only a quarter as many haddock.

Scientists warn that an ozone hole may open up over the Arctic in the spring, as it has in Antarctica. If it is as large, it would cover Britain and much of northern Europe, raising the danger of skin cancer and forcing people to wear sunblock creams.

Despite recent rain, Britain is suffering its driest two-year period since records began. Eight of our 10 warmest summers on record have occurred in the last 17 years. Global warming is suspected, and the biggest changes are likely to come from global warming. A recent government report has predicted that there could be a drought as bad as the present one every three years within the lifetime of today's children. The South and East would suffer most from this: the North and West, by contrast, would become wetter with heavy rainstorms, floods, and winds. Low-lying areas like Romney Marsh, the Somerset Levels and around the Wash would be threatened by rising seas.

One tenth of Britain's rare plants could be wiped out by 2020. Bluebells are particularly threatened. Britain could become Europe's main centre for growing sunflowers for cooking oil. But, despite the sun, strawberry crops would suffer because they need frost to fruit.

Since the Mediterranean is likely to become too hot for holidays, sunseekers might flock to Britain attracted by the sea breezes. But beaches will disappear as the seas rise and there will be more outbreaks of toxic algae, discouraging bathing. Thousands more deaths from heat are predicted in London alone each year and diseases like leishmaniasis viral encephalitis and even malaria could spread. Farming and water supplies would be immensely disrupted.

But there is a still worse possibility. Changes in currents in the North Atlantic pose the frightening prospect that the Gulf Stream might weaken or veer away, causing Britain to cool, rather than heat up, during global warming. We share, after all, the same latitude as Labrador.