I noticed something odd as I was going through Alexandra Palace Park the other day after one of my Friday surgeries.I suppose I hadn’t had chance to notice before with the new session of Parliament starting and trying to re-master the merry dance of trying to be in Westminster and Hornsey & Wood Green at the same time.But I was suddenly struck that in late October all the trees in the park had leaves on and they were all completely green.

I can’t claim to be dedicated studier of the seasons, but I had the terrible sense that what I was seeing wasn’t quite right and I was reminded of something I had seen in Al Gore’s stunning film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth‘.One thing he highlights in his barrage of evidence is the effect climate change is having on our seasons by making spring earlier and autumn later.And here before my eyes I was seeing this in action.

Gore makes the case in the most straight forward way possible why climate change is a fact and what the terrible consequences will be.

This is part of the reason that I voted for a massive overhaul of Lib Dem tax policy at our autumn conference that would see polluters being taxed more and personal income less.Given the timescale we have, hitting people in their pockets is the only way to really change their behaviour for the better.

In his film he draws an analogy of a frog in boiling water.If said frog jumped into a pan of boiling of water, it would jump straight out because it would feel the stark difference in temperatures.However, if this poor suffering frog was put into a pan of cold water and left there whilst the water was heated, it would more than likely boil to death because it wouldn’t notice the gradual change of temperature.

Thus, climate change is the slow boiling of water and we are the poor suffering frog.Our problem being that without as sudden jolt we will be resigned to the fate of our amphibian friend.As a child the autumn leaves would start falling when school went back and here we are, late October, with leaves still on the trees.So, is this jolt enough or are we just left thinking: is it me, or it is getting a bit hotter in here?

(Although Al Gore’s film isn’t available on DVD until late December, you can buy the book of the film and also the last Lib Dem TV film was about climate change too).