Who Cares Enough To Act, And Why?
December 21, 2011 by Doug Kennedy
Over 50 years of environmental activism I find that I, among thousands of stronger, more dedicated people am living in a world that would have horrified me as a youth, because the situation is worse than I think I could have imagined. Had you told me that the human population of The Earth would have more than doubled, from 3 billion to 7 billion, and that each of us would be using vastly more resources than in, say, 1960 it would have seemed blindingly obvious that we were heading for trouble. Add to that an increase in atmospheric CO2 from 0.3% to 0.4%, global warming and rising and horrifyingly dramatic species depletion and I’d have been screaming the question “Well, why aren’t they doing something about it?”
Certainly, environmental activists of all hues (and there are many, unfortunately) have failed, in spite of all the many gains:
* Media coverage. We see and hear information about all the dire environmental issues that face us today on the media far more than previously.
* Protection of land and waterways. We have European Environment Directives, subsidies to help farmers do less damage (and certainly, the poisons that were brought into focus by Silent Spring have largely disappeared), protection of fish stocks, clean waterways, control over wastes and so on. In fact, industries complain that there are so many environmental regulations that it is difficult to do business.
* Protection of green countryside. We have planning rules that make it quite difficult to build on green field sites, particularly green belts and national parks so that people involved in many aspects of housing say that we are not building anywhere near enough houses: this does beg the question why we want to build on more green field when there are large numbers of empty houses and bits of land that could be brought into service, but it is a big issue now.
Yet the global problems listed above haven’t gone away, they just get worse: how can this be?
* World GDP will grow an average 3.1%/year through 2030, driving oil demand from the current 84 million barrels/day to 103 million b/d, when European governments and others have targets to reduce imissions as early as 2020, and dramatically by 2050.
* The human population is growing exponentially: it doubled between 1960 and 2002 and the rise is not slowing.
* That population is demanding ever more resources per head: energy, water, richer food, travel, consumerism.
The combination of population and resource demand means that we simply devastating the system that we depend upon for survival; the atmosphere, water, land to inhabit, wilderness, forest, mineral resources.
Even if you go against the science and believe (yes, believe) that, if global warming is happening it isn’t caused primarily by human activity, you have to admit that there is a serious threat to the stability of existence 20 or 50 years down the line. This means that there is a serious threat to our childrens’ and grand-childrens’ futures. Although we often hear that children are “the most important things in our lives”, we still we don’t take the action needed to negate the threats to their futures.
I was therefore fascinated to hear that a new political movement has got underway, focused on environmental conservation that is even causing concern in David Cameron’s true blue Witney constituency. These people (who probably include those in the movement against wind turbines in the countryside) are against changes in the English planning law designed to simplify and streamline regulation. Currently, if you want to build on a green-field site adjacent to many towns, you are likely to be confronted by a strong local opposition that can be very organised and effective, and that often prevents important housing and infra-structure projects from proceeding. This is very expensive, and politicians are concerned that the UK economy is suffering as a result and that this is the cause of the low level of house building which people, apparently, need. So the Government is proposing to cut planning law down to make it much simpler and also, and here lies the rub, to shift the balance towards the developers to overcome this log-jam.
The protest movement has worked out that there are sufficient voters in potentially affected constituencies to vote out many sitting Tory MPs if they vote tactically, and this they are threatening to do if the houses and factories start appearing on their beloved countryside. All strength to them I say! There is little enough open countryside left in this crowded isle.
But what has made me think hard, is that the environmentalist movement has rarely managed to gather such political momentum: we have remainedout of the mainstream of society, seen either as sandel-wearing nutters or at best as do-gooders who’s ideas we really should try to implement… a bit (see ‘Death To The Environmentalists’ blog below). Politicians are boasting of being “The greenest government ever!” (D.Cameron) and other such guff, but both this government and New Labour before them have seemed unwilling to really put the coordinated, funded policies into action that bring these aspirations about.
Environmental activists can and do strive to engender positive action by governments through lobbying, the media and direct action, and these days web petitions, and these do have an affect that supplements the more powerful long term economic need highlighted by Nicholas Stern and others. We local activists often feel that we are on the edges, nudging peoples’ attention and consciences, but actually achieving little in the way of changing attitudes and behaviours towards the environment. We have to content ourselves with tiny successes, be very patient, and believe that just plugging away year after year WILL make a useful difference. I have my doubts.
So why have the Tory heartlands suddenly become avid conservationists? Because they do love the countryside and, being among the better-off part of society, spend more time it than their poorer urban fellow citizens. It is naked self-interest, centred on this generation’s preferences and narrow in it’s focus. Like anything, it is a gut reaction, from the heart, emotional: “My glorious countryside where I walk the dogs and enjoy the spring flowers, my heritage..” etc.
So there is a passion there, and a willingness to act: how can it be broadened such that the mainstream of society starts to demand stronger action by government, and starts to modify it’s behaviour to deal with our big environmental problems? What is going to put a ‘fire in the belly’ of Mr & Mrs Averge Middle-Class start to threaten to change their votes if local councillors and MPs across our country do not take significant action on the environment?
It’s the old ‘Dunkirk Spirit’ we are looking for, but as in 1939, it is likely that only a dire and immediate threat to our country, and therefore to all of our best interests, is going to bring about the change that we need: and that will be far, far too late.
The Mysteries In The Forest Floor
December 19, 2011 by Doug Kennedy
Ancient woodland has been continually wooded since at least 1600AD, and some may even link back to the original wildwood that covered the UK around 10,000 years ago, after the last Ice Age. There are ancient beech woods in the Chiltern Hills which I explore at all times of the year. They are particularly lovely in the spring and autumn when the colours are vibrant with the changing season.
Beech trees are very stately, their smooth grey trunks, like cathedral columns rising from the leafy forest floor, often only spreading into a canopy dozens of feet up in the air. The foliage glows warm green in the spring against a blue sky, and in the autumn turns golden before the leaves fall and add to the deep litter on the floor.
When men go into a forest to chop it down, they see trees, and powered by burning the carbon of trees that grew 200 million years ago, smash their way through to bring down the trees and gain the timber. In an ancient wood, beneath the vast wheels and metal tracks they are also destroying an amazing complexity of life that thrives under the surface of the forest floor, and this is one of the reasons why ancient woods are so precious. It is also where the mystery dwells.
I have a favourite beech wood atop the Chiltern ridge which is reached by a small path running steeply uphill from a nice country pub. This wood is not only very lovely, with it’s open, leafy forest floor and towering columns of trees, but very rich in fungi. At first glance, the floor seems rather devoid of life as not much grows beneath mature beech, but look closer, particularly in the Autumn, and you will find all manner of colourful and exotic fungal life among the leaf litter. In parts it is carpetted with delicious black Horns of Plenty, stumps covered with little bonnets and small common puffballs, innocuous looking greyish Death Caps and occasional cepes and chanterelles (as well as many small brown jobs).
(Chanterelle, left; Common Bonnet, middle; Magpie Ink Cap)
Southern England has had a very dry, warm autumn especially during the peak mushroom season of late September to early November which worried some farmers (a bit), made it a lot easier to walk along Chiltern forest paths as the usual slushy mud was absent, and caused a near absence of fungi. On a foray I joined in October in my area we found almost nothing – a few ‘small brown jobs’ if you looked hard, but all of the normal exotic fecundity was absent: it was a disappointing day, so I went for a run instead.
The dry weather continued until the middle of November, when some heavy showers moistened the soil. Leaves were still on many of the trees, and a foxglove was flowering in my garden – a flower which would normally be long gone by October.
I kept visiting these woods and on November 16th, things began to get interesting again, but the fungi were a quite different range from last year: if 12 species, only 2 matched! These were funnel caps (some very large) and common bonnets (picture above) and two edible species, the Wood Blewett (below left) which is purplish and oyster mushrooms, below right.
Mushroom do not just grow from a seed, like green plants, but are the fruiting bodies of the main plant, which is the ‘mycellium’. This is a network of fibres, or hyphae, that can be absolutely enormous, spreading over acres of forest floor, or very localised on a single tree stump, or anything in between. Therefore, underneath the leaf litter on this beech forest floor is an amazing complexity of intertwining fungus hyphae of many different species, the overall mass of which is much, much greater than that of the mushrooms and toadstools that we see on the surface from time to time. Also, whilst the fruiting bodies are ephemeral, the underground plant, or mycelium, may be as old as the forest itself.
In fact, fungi are critical to a forest’s health as the trees grow in symbiosis with them. The roots of many trees are ‘infected’ with the fungi around them, and this seems to benefit both organisms, helping the tree gain nutriants and possible water. So a healthy ancient forest is one in which many species depend upon each other for their survival, not only in predator-prey relationships, but as symbionts.
The colourful and varied fungi shown here are manifestations of the real forest mystery that lies unseen beneath our feet and is much too complex and mysterious for us to competely understand. Thus I will keep visiting the forest during the autumn to see what is fruiting at any time, possibly finding something delicious for supper (only taking what I can eat), and always enjoying the beauty of the forest.
If you want to find out more about fungi and experience the delight of finding these ephemeral beauties, locate the nearest fungus group on the internet. In this area, we have the Bucks Fungus Group which can be found at http://www.bucksfungusgroup.org.uk/