just a mo... ppm

It's squatting balefully in a corner of my kitchen; green and knobbly, plump, pendulous and slightly sinister. I haven't the faintest idea what it is. My first thought was some sort of pumpkin, but now I'm not so sure. I cut it open cautiously last night, but the pale crispy flesh didn't look very pumpkin like. Some sort of melon perhaps? It tasted nondescript enough to be a melon, though not very sweet, and are melons supposed to be that crunchy? Perhaps just a very unripe one? No, maybe it was a squash after all. I curried a bit of it anyway, just as an experiment, and it seemed to taste ok. But doubts assailed me. What sort of culinary faux pas was I committing? 'You curried a melon?!' I put the rest aside; one day I will come home to find it ripe or rotten.

One of the nice things about attempting to run a business with a sustainable ethos is that you end up rubbing shoulders with like-minded people. Like Outspoken Delivery, the cycle couriers I share an office with. Like - because the lads at Outspoken have an organic veg box delivered to our office every week - like COFCo, the Cambridge Organic Food Company , whose driver turns up every Wednesday, stops for a chat, and nips out the back for a tinkle. (I wonder - does he have regular customers on the other days of the week that he knows will be in for a loo stop, or does he just have to keep it in?).

With a box turning up every week anyway, it seemed daft to continue propping up Tesco's profit margins, so I signed up to get one too, which I share with a neighbour on the river. So now I prop up the profit margins of COFCo instead. They are such a terribly nice bunch of people I'm more than happy to do that, and as most of the food is sourced locally I'm saving an awful lot of food miles, and hence CO2, compared to my old food habits. It's good on so many levels - so much easier not having to choose between a dozen types of potatoes at the supermarket; so much better not having to strip clingfilm and polystyrene from my tomatoes and stuff it in a bin; good for the planet and good for the soul.

And it's so much more exciting not knowing half the time what you are eating. Hey, I don't care, I'm going to curry that melon anyway - fancy coming round for dinner?

"Beep beep beep beep beep BEEEEEEEEP.... the Government has increased its target for a reduction in carbon emissions from 60% to 80% by 2050. The environment minister, Ed Miliband, said the move was in response to increasing evidence that climate change was happening more quickly than was thought a few years ago. In other news, two supermarkets have dropped their petrol prices below 1 pound per litre. Gordon Brown said that he hoped other outlets would follow suit in passing on the reduction in wholesale oil prices."

I don't know how the BBC announcer managed to keep a level voice in reading the nine o clock new tonight. Or is it only me that thinks its bleeding obvious that reducing oil prices is hardly a good way to encourage people to burn 80% less of the stuff?

A few months ago the government was even calling on OPEC countries to increase oil production in order to keep rising oil costs down. It's mind-boggling. Can they really not see that there is a 1 to 1 relationship? Every single atom of carbon that gets pumped out the ground as oil or gas becomes a molecule of CO₂ that is released to the atmosphere from our engines and power stations. A 10% increase in oil production equals a 10% increase in CO₂ emissions. That's it: end of story. Well, at least until carbon capture comes along, but that could be a long time yet.

So what an 80% reduction in CO₂ emissions really needs is an 80% reduction in oil production. And an 80% reduction in petrol being pumped into petrol tanks. Yet people aren't going to use use less of the stuff if you make it cheaper. It's obvious, isn't it? Surely? Or have the government realised something that I haven't?