So, farewell then...

...to the Yangtze River dolphin.

A sad milestone has been passed in humanity's destruction of planet Earth. For the first time, our activities have caused the extinction of a cetacean. The following is taken from the website of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society:

An expedition to document the last remaining Chinese river dolphins has returned after a six week survey which covered the entire known range of the baiji or Yangtze River dolphin. A team of international scientists using both visual and acoustic monitoring techniques made a full sweep of the area but failed to record one sighting, leading experts to believe that this species is now extinct.

The article goes on to explain what it is we've lost.

The baiji represents a loss not just of a species but a whole family of animals which were endemic to the Yangtze River and evolved separately to other whales and dolphins for over 20 million years. The baiji was described as a ‘living fossil’, remaining as it had, unchanged for at least 3 million years since it first left the sea to swim into the Yangtze River.

With China's booming population and its unregulated economic growth, the baiji has succumbed to pollution, traffic collisions, and heavy fishing using explosives. One wonders what the great poets of ancient China - poets such as Tu Fu and Li Po - would have made of the 'new' Yangtze. I doubt they would have seen much 'progress' in its devastation.

Personally, I knew little about the Yangtze River dolphin; but last year I saw one of its relatives, the Irrawaddy Dolphin, clinging on to life in the Cambodian Mekong. We were filming the last episode of Planet Action, and our task was to draw attention to the plight of a species reduced by pollution and over-fishing to a few dozen individuals.

The Irrawaddy is a shy and elusive dolphin - nothing like its gregarious, salt water cousins. The most you may see of it, on the swirling muddy water, is the melon-shaped head, a puff of water, and a two or three second dive back into its element. This was enough to persuade me that we cannot allow such a creature to die out. The loss would not be purely 'biological': it would be cultural, too.

The people who live, in desperate poverty, alongside the Mekong or 'Mother River', feel a strong emotional bond with the Irrawaddy dolphin. They do not want to harm it. A local legend explains how the species came into being. More and more, local communities depend on eco-tourism that focuses on the dolphins.

If the Irrawaddy dolphin is lost, the Cambodian people lose something of themselves. Likewise, every time humanity allows a species to disappear, it is our humanity that is diminished. For we are creatures of the Earth: subject to the same laws of evolution, and the same certainty of mortality, as every other thing that lives.

Of motes and beams

'Why beholdest thou the mote in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?' St Matthew ch.7, v.3

Okay, so why am I coming over all Scriptural?

The truth is, I am a hypocrite. Jesus, if he returned amongst us (and had a degree in environmental science), would doubtless berate me for double standards.

You see, I am an environmentalist but I'm also a novelist. I write and publish books and those books are made out of wood pulp. What is the origin of this wood pulp? It's a question I've been slow in asking. Today I finally bit the bullet and spoke to Beverley Fletcher from Greenpeace's Forests campaign.

Greenpeace has been working flat out to persuade the publishing industry in Britain to print books on recycled and Forest Stewardship Council certified paper. So far, some big names have signed up, including Random House, Bloomsbury, Penguin and (yes) even Rupert Murdoch's Harper Collins. My publishers, however, have not signed. Hodder Headline is, in Ms Fletcher's dispiriting opinion, 'the renegade of the industry'.

Hodder is owned by Hachette, which in turn (oh that beam, that bloody beam) belongs to Lagardere, a major French media and armaments company. (My one defence for this is that my sales are so bad that I'm doing my bit to bankrupt the multinational from within.) Hachette has shown itself to have all the environmental conscience of Dick Cheney. So Hodder Headline, in turn, is skipping its moral responsibilities and won't collaborate on the Greenpeace project for a more sustainable publishing industry.

But - I hear nobody object - the little writing at the front of the Hodder books seems to reassure us. It says: 'Hodder Headline's policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from woods grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.'

Now you don't have to be Terry Eagleton to do an effective bit of practical criticism on these statements. All paper is 'renewable' but that's not the same as renewed. All paper is 'recyclable' but that's not the same as recycled. As for the assurances about logging and processing, countries have wildly differing environmental regulations. Quite a lot, actually, have no regulations worthy of the name.

The whole point of using recycled paper is that it reuses existing wood pulp. As for FSC certification, it is regarded by all environmental groups as the only truly reliable, international standard. All forests that grow are sustainable (that insidious postfix again) but most forests, at present, are not sustainably managed.

Does it matter? 40% of UK publishing is working towards greener paper sourcing; but Hachette UK represents a staggering 17% of the industry.

So what can I, one of the least commercially valuable authors in the Hodder empire, hope to do to change things? Well, I'll be badgering my editor. I shall also write to the big guys in Hodder and Hachette, pointing out how unreasonable they are being.

Can an appeal from me change their attitudes? Almost certainly not. But there are plenty of Hodder authors who have more clout - from John Le Carre to Stephen King and David Mitchell. If I get a crap response from the powers at the top, I may have to appeal to my fellow authors to bring about the much needed change of policy.

I will post on this issue in January, when I am due to hand in my new novel. How wonderful it would be if Serious Things (scheduled for publication early in 2008) came out on recycled or FSC-certified paper.

To find out more, click here: http://www.fsc.org/en/ and here: http://www.greenpeaceactive.org.uk/detail.php?id=206&cat=300