To each of us, having more money, more freedom, more choice is a good thing; that is pretty universal. For the majority of the Earth’s population, it is survival, and a never-ending struggle to secure food, clothing and shelter, let alone healthcare and education. In the richer countries, we strive to gain :

a. Sufficient for our needs or

b. Plenty so we don’t have to worry or

c. Loads so we can have anything we want or

d. Even more than the next billionaire.

For many people, having enough is sufficient, but we now know that for certain people there is no limit to greed and that it is infectious. Thus corporate executives constantly compare their earnings to others, and society is sucked in to believing that they have to advertise higher salaries to secure ‘the right quality’ of person. This has contributed to the huge disparity in wealth that exists across the world today, and the earnings gap is socially divisive, unfair and damaging to corporate finances, especially where failure is being rewarded because of gilt-edged pay deals. It contributes to corporate executive arrogance, which can result in the sort of disastrous decisions that led to the banking crisis of 2008.

Prior to then, people in general in the developed nations were becoming better off, and I have been surprised at how quickly we have forgotten the ‘waste not want not’ ethos of the post war mid 20th century. The throw-away society, started in the USA in the late 50s and fostered by Western governments’ pursuit of economic growth as THE measure of success, has resulted in people believing that it is their right to buy anything, go anywhere, waste anything and have everything tailored to their personal desires, particularly if they have money. This generates waste for the sake of it as people manufacture anything at all that will earn some money: just consider the pile of rubbish that a Disney store pedals for example, or the growing dumps in peoples’ lofts and cellars, and this is just the good stuf.

For countries relying on ever-increasing economic growth, it is like a heroin addiction in that the body feels very sick without the drug and ever increasing amounts are needed. Anyone who suggests that the drug is not a good thing is a boring, kill-joy bore and, by the way, the final outcome is fatal.

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/

However, a little further on in Spickett’s Lane there are several more plum trees festooned with fruit of different varieties. The first of these are small and crimson when ripe, and quite deliciously sweet with an intense flavour. Juice dribbles down my chin. There are damsons, small and black and too high to pick without a ladder, more small yellow fruit and one in-between. On the other side the lane, the blackberries are not ready yet, but will be black and luscious in a couple of weeks.

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I turned right, past the piggery where a few Oxford black-and-tan rare pigs remain, snoozing in the gentle morning, then round the edge of the bean field down towards the river. Waddesdon Estates farm this land and, as part of their Environmental Stewardship Scheme, all of their fields have a wildlife strip around the edge where wildflowers (weeds) prosper and bees and butterflies dart and settle in their search for nectar. A month ago, when the wildflowers were at their best, there were lots of butteflies: meadow brown in particular, common blues and small whites, green-veined whites, red admirals, peacocks. Now these are fewer, but they are still to be found along with a gatekeeper (small meadow brown) or two.

There are rustlings in the high, scrubby hedgerow and I hear some squirrels having a fight, squeaking and jumping about but see nothing. I cross the stile that penetrates it and step into a cow pasture with a wooded, watery drainage channel on my left. This is where newts, grass snakes and waterfoul skulk and a source of dragonflies and damselflies, and I see a large one zoom over my head, too fast to identify.

There is a brown bull with broad shoulders and a deep chest right ahead of me, on the footpath route over the field, and I approach with a little caution; but he is quiet and docile as I skirt around him. The air is fairly quiet now where it was alive with birdsong a month or two ago, but there are birds about. A buzzard circles up on a thermal, but doesn’t come close enough for me to see his colours. There are a lot of crows in the sheep meadow, and rooks in the wood at the top of the field, and an owl box in the tree near the cattle bridge where I saw a tawny owl last march. And there are the ubiquitous pigeons, flapping away noisily as I approach, and sparrows.

The cattle bridge crosses the River Thame, and a pause to see if I can see any fish in it’s fast flowing water. The reeds are varied and luxuriant and a shy moorhen pokes it’s head out of them but doesn’t emerge this time. A couple of cows gaze vacantly at me as they chew their cud.

I cross a gate and a stile, entering the Eythrope Estate, home of Lord Rothschild, who also owns the entire Waddesdon Estate.

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Again there are wide, wild field borders, and as I skirt the field through longish grass, I see more white butterflies, and a couple of brimstones that look like a leaf when they stop to feed.

Above, buzzards and red kites glided under the blue sky and seemed to be gathering over the hill to the north: perhaps there was some carrion there.

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As I walk, young pheasants suddenly burst up from the wheat and tall grass, flying further down the track or running into the scrub for cover. These are being bred for the shooting season that starts in October, but that is not the only doom that awaits these tasty game birds!

From only a few feet away, a fox springs up from the wheat where it had been lying in wait to catch a pheasant dinner, and runs off disconsolately through the golden crop.  It is amazing what a wheat field conceals: along with the fox, and the pheasants, various small birds would suddenly appear, wings flapping at great speed in their panic to reach the nearby trees.

I come to a wider area of wildflowers still in bloom: this area would have been planted with a rich variety of native species as part of the Waddesdon environmental work. The air hums with honey and bumble bees, many different flies and some small blue butterflies. This is a sound I hear too seldom these days where it used to be the norm on a summers day. It is the sound of nature at work in a healthy countryside and alien to blank squares of monoculture. This land is intensively farmed, but space is left for natural ecosystems to work and it’s health protected from chemicals and machines.

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I stop to enjoy this buzz of life, then as I turn, a hare bursts out from the undergrowth a few yards away, and disappears into the hedge. About half a dozen kites are still circling in the air high over the hill, and a sudden birdsong bursts from nearby trees.

I leave the Waddesdon land, and climb through a meadow, then over another stile onto a neat and tidy field of rye grass: green and even and silent. The field edge has been mown, and it is empty of flowers, insects or any interest and the contrast is staggering.

We have turned much of our countryside into an aseptic monoculture which has been profoundly destructive to the diversity of nature in the British countryside. We have cut down hedgerows, ancient forests (over 80 percent have dissappeared this century), poisoned waterways and tried to turn the land into a factory floor which, for sterility, this field resembles. The terrible thing to me is that we have forgotten what the countryside should be like, and was like until very recently. The land along the Thame Valley shows that we can have both efficiently produced food and healthy natural ecosystems.

Waddesdon manages to farm profitably and efficiently, and because the people running it leave some land for nature and take care how they use modern technologies, after only a few years there is a resurgance of a diverse and healthy countryside. This creates a balance that protects crops, a balance that is destroyed by over-use of expensive chemicals and over-intensive practices. The result is that many of our species of  birds and mammals are on endangered lists, and the countyside is often silent and boring.

My walk took me less than two hours, and in that time I have come across dozens of species, and been inspired and amazed by seeing the web of life at work. We do need more of it throughout our country, and it is us, all of us who have to make it happen realising that it is our health and quality of life that is at stake, and doing what we can to understand and restore our countryside.

On your last visit to the shops, it is almost certain that you came home with some plastic that you hadn’t taken out with you: if you are really careless, then it would include the plastic carrier bags from the shops you visted, but it’s hard to avoid the odd polystyrene punnet in shrink wrap. Then there are the cardboard boxes with plastic wrappers on the food inside, and sometimes also on the outside!

Then there are those little bottles of water in shrink-wrapped multipacks, and packs of fruit drinks with tough wrappers that will be around long, long after the drink has been consumed and excreted into the sewage system.

Shrink-wrap can’t normally be recycled by local authorities, nor can polystyrene, nor many other packaging materials, so they end up in land fill or being burned in the incinerators that no-one likes in their back yard (so why do those same poeple continue to produce so much waste?), along with much of the recyclable plastic.

Some of it just gets chucked anywhere: just look at the verges of a major road that hasn’t been cleared by the local authority for a while. I have been picking up this sort of litter as I walk or run through parks and the countryside for decades, but what gets missed just blows somewhere. Today’s haul was a dirty nappy in Ashridge Forest, left just off the dirt footpath in a pretty piece of woodland. There was plastic in that too.

What has this to do with grey whales? Have a look at these web pages:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/11/plastiki-rothschild-plastic-bottle-catamaran (millions of tonnes of plastic swilling around in the Pacific Ocean while sea life disappears)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/20/beached-grey-whale-in-sea_n_544130.html (A beached grey whale contains large amounts of domestic plastic.)

None of these materials existed 50 years ago, when plastics were still relatively expensive and the technology was at an early stage, so the entire phenomenon has built up during one generation. Our society is more obsessed with cleanliness and smelling nice than it ever was, but we seem to pay less and less attention to the filth and pollution that we leave in our wakes as we drive on through our lives.

It cannot make sense that every time we buy a sandwich, a drink and a coffee, which are consumed in 10 minutes, we throw away:

Sandwich: shrink wrap or plastic sleeve, carboard pocket, the bits we didn’t want to eat.

Drink: A clear plastic bottle with label and coloured plastic cap.

Coffee: Polystyrene or carboard cup, plastic top, plastic or wooden stirer, paper sugar packet.

What can you do about it? Quite a lot actually, but only if you are willing to think a bit more about your actions, and to not just take the most convenient course every time, which usually means buying everything in one trip to the supermarket: local shops and outdoor markets usually put less packaging on food items. And you can always select items that have less packaging, or tell the butcher that you don’t really need two plastic bags and plastic film around those chops.

If you are feeling really bold, you could protest to the retailer.

If you disagree with all of this and are one of those people who think that their convenience is paramount, and that chops need 3 layers of plastic, then you won’t have read this far anyway. But if you did read this far, I’d be interested to hear how you can justify it.

Were these fields to be left alone, apart from mowing, for long enough, they could become meadows, rich in wildflowers, with nesting places for skylarks and other birds, and a refuge for hares. That is unlikely – it’s not the culture around here, but if we are so much in need of food that we want to plant GM crops, why are the in this state?

Much of the actively farmed land in this area has livestock on it – beef cattle mostly, some sheep and a little dairy. Cattle are notoriously inefficient in terms of food per acre, eating and drinking many times the weight of meat produced during their lives, let alone the methane they blow out of their rears.

Then there is all the land throughout the South East that is used for rearing horses, which are a hobby. There is an industry around them which provides work and pleasure for many of course, and they are lovely animals. But again, this is land that is supposedly so scarce that we need to plant GM crops.

Again the same question is begged – if we can afford to put so much land to livestock, can there really be a food crisis so severe that industrially produced GM crops are needed?

It may well be that the prices paid to farmers for crops make them less attractive, or even unaffordable to grow, but that raises questions about the ‘free and efficient market’ that is supposed to apply. The market for food is a bit of a free-for-all, certainly, meaning that it is the interests of the rich and powerful that are best served, rather than the good of the land. The fact that farmers are sometimes paid less than the food costs to grow creates great inefficiencies and waste, and also that the problem is not short supply.

It is a fact that the UK has a growing population. They need to be fed, and some very knowledgable people say that this will become a problem. But why are GM crops necessary? We seem to have plenty of land available for growing crops that could feed any number of people, but we just don’t use it. Of course, as long as supermarkets can import food cheaper than our farmers can produce it the problem is even less urgent. If we foresee a problem down the road, which is quite likely,we should plan for that both in terms of quantity of food grown and population size.

GM crops use lots of aggro-chemicals, including pesticides. Pesticides are intended to kill things – the bees, butterflies and other vital insects that unintentionally ingest them included. Even without GM crops this is a problem: One of our local villages had an open gardens day on Sunday and in 4 large gardens I didn’t see ONE honey bee (quite a few bumble bees) and few butterflies. The advent of GM crops in the UK is only likely to make this situation worse, owing to the quantities of chemicals needed for them.

Then there are the ‘unintended consequences’ of planting GM crops. By their nature, we don’t know what these will be, but these are alien plant types that require a lot of technology to make them successful, and their wide distribution could be catastrophic. You can forget about organic farms nearby as their crops are likely to become infected.

Then there is the fact that GM seed takes a lot of research and development – they cost millions and millions of pounds. So the companies that produce them own the genetic material, and will want to sell it as widely as possible once they are allowed to. They are very powerful and will offer big incentives to get farmers roped in. As the market grows, the company becomes more powerful, and eventually, the trap shuts, and the farmers and consumers are in it – you can’t re-use the seed, nor cross it with other varieties yourself. You have to buy the seed, AND the ghastly pesticides from The Company PLC (probably American or Chinese owned).

We have enough land to grow food for ourselves and more: it is a matter of how we choose to use it….  and whether we allow the global human population to continue to explode (http://www.optimumpopulation.org/).

Item 1: 33.8% of honey bees in the USA disappeared or died since last year. The picture is much the same in the UK, though figures aren’t all in yet and is a bad year in a continuing trend. The main, but not only cause, is  ‘Colony Collapse Disorder’ where whole colonies just die or disappear: what triggers it isn’t known, but taking into account chemical residues in wax, hives and honey, pesticides are a likely contributor. And if you think that farmers all stick to the usage guidelines for these poisons, you are probably deluding yourself.

If flowers aren’t pollinated, then most fruit (which includes vegetables such as beans) can’t grow. The immediate effect on our food would be very sad, the long-term implications are frightening.

Millions of gallons of crude oil are being spewed out into the sea in the Gulf of Mexico from where they were stashed away by nature millions of years ago. There is no easy fix and vast areas of coast and sea bed in the Gulf and beyond are imminent danger of destruction. The cost in fish, birds and other sea creatures will be huge, even if they can stop the flow. If it goes on for weeks, as it may well, the size of the disaster will be enormous and terribly tragic.

This sort of news appears somewhere every day of course, and the scientists warn us that we are on a cliff edge. So what is actually important to each of us today?

Unless there is a World-wide revolution and What Is Important becomes OUR ENVIRONMENT, it is hard to be optimistic.

So there was huge disruption and worry at East Anglia University and damage done to the reputation of climate change science in general aided and abetted by the media, who claimed that climate science itself was a scandal.

The latest investigation results to be published last week exonerate the U.E.A. scientists and it turns out that one reason for the (admittedly inappropriate) emails was that the scientists were constantly asked for their data and it had become too onerous as they didn’t have the resources to deal with the queries.

Now scientists are a sceptical bunch who rarely, if ever, say that something has been ‘proved beyond doubt’, or is ‘fact’. Unlike the newspapers, they do not tend to shout rubbish and lies from the rooftops, then forget about it when it turns out to be wrong (unless sued of course). If a scientific theory is shown to be erroneous, they argue about and investigate more and update their findings, regarding being wrong as part of the process of investigation and learning rather than as a sin.

So where are these climate change deniers who were so noisy a few weeks ago now? Have they, or the newspapers who gave them voice, screamed at us that, in fact, climate science is NOT a scandal and that the scientists have been vindicated, whereas the deniers were wrong?

It has been very quiet. The damage has been done, but no-one involved seems to have to do anything to repair it.

It does nothing to improve my opinion of Lawson or his self-seeking cronies.

A group of Alabama climate scientists who are collecting data from a satellite and who are regarded as climate sceptics have announced that the Earth warmed more in January 2010 than any year since records began in 1979.

Headline 2 – People don’t believe it.

At the same time, opinion polls show that people in general have become much more skeptical about global warming since the well publicized errors in the climate report published by the IPCC, and the dodgy emails at East Anglia University.

So basically, we like business as usual, and if you have the money, it’s fun. If you want to put this into perspective, I recommend reading “The Rise And Fall Of Consumer Cultures” by Erik Assadourian which can be found, along with other stuff, through Transforming Cultures at blogs.worldwatch.org/. I’ve spouted stuff along similar lines in these blogs, but he does it much better.

Of course, weather and climate are different – we experience weather every day, and a year is a long time. Climate applies over tens, or hundreds of years and describes the general, overall situation. We find it difficult to see this perspective when battling through the snow of January 2010 or sweltering in the heat of June 1976. One degree centigrade is nothing within the variation of weather, whereas if a climate changes by a degree it is significant.

If the entire global average temperature goes up by one degree, it is a major change, and this is what is happening.

Climate scientists around the world have persuaded politicians that global warming is happenin. For some of those politicians, it is a disaster that is happening now as their countries are in danger of inundation from the sea already; most accept that global warming is caused by human activities but are having some difficulty in doing anything about it, but there are some who have not accepted it or who choose to ignore it as an issue. The overall status is that scientists think it is happening and have warned humanity that it needs to be dealt with.

A large minority of the UK and US populations do not accept that humans cause global warming, and recent revelations of wrong information in high level publications and nefarious emails among climate academics have given great impetus to the sceptics. There are few sceptics among the scientific community, but their voice tends to be magnified through the media by political and business interests, so these mistakes will have a resonance far beyond what is merited.

An interesting comparison the case of Dr Wakefield and his anti-MMR vaccine campaign. I heard yesterday that the General Medical Council roundly condemned him and his actions which caused thousands of mothers to withdraw their children from vaccination. The result has been increased levels of measles and mumps, which have killed and damaged children. I feel strongly about this as my sister’s immune system was permenantly damaged by measles in the 50s, before vaccines were available. Every study and enquiry into the matter has concluded the Wakefield was wrong, and it transpires that he had a conflict of interest anyway, but that hasn’t stopped the press and some people in vociforously promoting his cause. And this in spite of the damage the diseases are doing children today.

So my conclusion is that we believe what we choose to believe, and scientists can experiment till the sky falls in, but even if all of their conclusions point the same way, the public at large won’t necessarily accept them. We also tend to pick out the parts that suit our individual points of view, such snippets are often wielded like a large debating club, even if they are inaccurate, flawed or plain wrong.

BUT, we must accept that we have been warned that global warming is a threat that puts civilization and millions or billions of lives at risk within the coming century. If we just continue as normal and do nothing to alleviate the risk, how will future generations look upon us? If the outcome is disastrous, then our generation will be cursed and despised. If things don’t turn out so badly, then we will still have used up the great bulk of all of the oil and gas resources of the world in two generations, and be leaving a planet strewn with trash and pollution.

As a friend said to me the other day, ‘Perhaps I just don’t care that much.’