Looking for Salvation
6th May 2008
As the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere creeps ever higher, it is increasingly difficult to see where salvation is going to come from. In the recent council elections millions of English citizens had the opportunity to vote for Green Party candidates. They were not required to give up their cars, sacrifice their foreign holidays, or cut back on luxury goods. Just to put a cross next to the name of the Green Party candidate. They did not do so in any number to make a perceptible difference. The Green Party made a net gain of just 5 seats. In the Greater London Assembly there was no change in the number of members elected to represent the Green Party. The Green candidate for mayor got a few thousand more votes than last time, but given the pace of climate change, the planet will be burnt to a cinder before we get a Green Mayor or a Green Government. The message to the mainstream parties is clear. Voters are not ready for green policies. Salvation is not going to come from politicians if the public does not elect the right people. Already the government is back-tracking on "pay as you throw" plans to tax people for the amount of rubbish they dispose of, and withdrawing the already delayed 2 pence on a litre of fuel. Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson is going to "reform" the Congestion Charge, and is opposed to the Kyoto Treaty.
The public is carrying on life as normal. People are driving, flying and consuming with little or no thought of the consequences. A small percentage of the population has grasped the seriousness of climate change and is altering their lifestyle, but unless nearly the whole population changes, the actions of a few thousand individuals is meaningless. So salvation is not going to come from public sacrifices.
Which begs the question, if politicians are not going to take a lead, and the public are not ready to change, what hope is there?
Tackling climate change will involve the most immense exercise in public education ever undertaken, and a mobilisation of the public on a scale not seen since the Second World War. Every day delayed is a day wasted. Eco calls on its readers to use the internet to spread the green message. The internet offers the means to spread a message faster than at any time in Mankind's history. Let 10 people know about Eco, and before you know it, there could be a peaceful green revolution, that brings about change just as quickly as the Berlin Wall fell. No-one thought that was possible, but it happened overnight. We need a green revolution in a similar timescale, and we cannot wait for politicians to take a lead.
Further reading: BBC comment "Green Movement forgets its politics"
In need of guidance
I have a friend at work. Lovely person, ever so kind to anyone upset or having a bad day. My problem is this. Each year she takes at least three foreign holidays, obviously flying to get there, and pumping out untold tonnes of carbon dioxide in the process. Skiing holiday every winter, and holidays in the sun with the kids.
Should I say something or am I being a killjoy? Her latest eco-crime is the acquisition of a top of the range BMW, equipped with a sat-nav system, which she proudly told the office, costs £2,000. That's right £2,000. Enough to save a village of starving African children, or preserve 5,000 acres of rainforest. But no, the money will be spent on a system that will tell her where she is. No longer is a map sufficient, it has to be a ludicrously expensive, high-tech gadget.
So it occurs to me, that this gadget is a symbol. Not just is my friend lost in a geographical sense, but in a spiritual sense also. I don't claim any superiority in being able to provide spiritual guidance, and I am far from perfect myself. But somehow we need to get the message across to all these "nice" people, that over-consumption in the Western world has consequences, often not for the person doing the consuming, but at the sharp end of climate change, in an Africa desert, or in low-lying Bangladesh. Guidance is needed. And not from a gadget costing £2,000.
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Nightmare on Wall Street
Environmentalists, most notably Edward Goldsmith, founder of "The Ecologist", have long warned of the "Limits to Growth". They argue that the Earth has a finite capacity and resources, and rising population and human consumption will come up against those limits, with potentially serious consequences. At the time these warnings were made they were dismissed as alarmist, and technology seemed to offer the means to defy natural systems, and allow the potential for limitless expansion. In Harold Wilson's time in the 1960's, scientists caught up in the white heat of technology promised electricity too cheap to meter. The alarmist predictions did not prove correct, or at least not in the timescale Goldsmith envisaged.
But in the current economic climate of Peak Oil, rising energy prices and inflation, dwindling natural resources, and soaring population, the recent crash in the money markets may be a sign that Goldsmith and others like him were right after all. There are limits to growth, even for the world's greatest economy, and when America catches a cold, the rest of us will too.
Science may yet deliver more growth, through the development of new energy sources and GM technology. But it will have to do so with incredible rapidity to keep pace with Western levels of consumption, to which the developing world aspires. If technology fails to deliver, then the limits of natural systems will impose their own correction, and we are all in for a bumpy ride. |