Doreen on Ice
| 13:23 UK time, Tuesday, 12 December 2006
Doreen Walton and I once spent a week living with a family in the English Midlands who were taking part in an experiment in which they tried to live on the same amount of energy as a family in India.
The climate in Haryana state in India is not as warm as you might think, not in February anyway, when we carried out the experiment.
And the family in India was rather wealthy by local standards. Each of their three daughters had a motor scooter and they had a family car.
Nonetheless, the English family froze - one of the memorable images I have from the experiment is Doreen and the two daughters of the Midlands family huddled under a duvet in the front room talking about food to take their minds off the cold.
But that was not tough enough for Doreen, oh no!
Not content with low-energy suffering in Burton-upon-Trent, Doreeen decided to go to live with an family in one of the northernmost communities in North America.
Her comments on the impact of the shrinking ice are well worth reading, especially in light of the new research which suggests there will be no ice there at all in the summer months within 35 years. We spoke to her about that on World Update today.
I've promised Doreen that as she becomes one of the world's leading environmental journalists I will certainly claim that I taught her everything she knows.
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