Ciaran Mundy says:

There is something very wrong about the mug, but in that way it’s a perfect symbol of our collective paralysis. If anything sums up the consumer culture response to the greatest threat of our time it has to be that mug! But it is funny too and reminds me of the opening credits to the BBC series Dad’s Army where an array of arrows carrying the Nazi swastika emblem sweeps back the Union Jack across the continent, leaving it to prod ineffectually back at the seemingly unstoppable might of the Nazi forces. Maybe as then we need the reluctant Americans to have a change of heart and throw their industrial ingenuity behind the right cause. Things might be starting to change in the US, with the first legal ruling against construction of two new coal fired power plants in Kansas on the grounds that they would cause damage through climate change (Nature,Vol 449, 25 October 2007). The true test of our values is how we encode them in Law. Maybe sooner than we think it will be possible to prosecute those who peddle patio heaters and £1.99 flights to Spain, consigning them to a brief shameful moment in history viewed with utter incredulity. Maybe. . .