Environment? What Environment?
October 7, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
Last night I went to a local Transition meeting: Transition is a network of local groups seeking to improve their communities environmental performance and awareness. It is a grass-roots movement that seeks to build momentum based on community interest and involvement and I am trying to do just that in my village. There were five people at a meeting that was intended to attract a crowd of locals and it was all quite depressing. The same is true of my village project: some people express an interest, even a strong interest, but when it comes to putting time and effort into building a real project, you get a lot of apologies and few turning up. And those that do turn up are often different at each meeting.
In my Sunday newspaper was a big article about the oceans turning to acid – right now, not some time in the future. If this goes on happening (and CO2 levels which cause it are increasing rapidly), then vast amounts of extra CO2 will be emitted by the oceans instead of absorbing it as carboniferous shells are dissolved. The other result will be that the marine foodchains will be completely disrupted.
This is just another huge impending disaster story to add to those we here on the news and read and those we don’t hear about.
My point is, that there is a huge disconnect between the environmental reality and humanity’s behaviour. Before the industrial revolution, and in more primitive cultures to this day, humans were forced to take account of the environment in order to survive. Many cultures placed the environment first in every decision that could affect it because that was how the society could assure it’s continuity. Where this didn’t happen, the result could be like Easter Island, where an advanced civilization simply died out.
It seems that we are unwilling to accept that we still are an integral part of our environment and that we cannot control it and we cannot over-burden it. Many people I speak to, including the young who are going to live through the coming decades, are fatalistic, taking the view that they will enjoy today and hope that tomorrow is OK. If it’s not going to be OK, then there will be a level of suffering that will make today’s troubles look like a holiday.
For people like me who are trying to do something about it, it is like pushing a large boulder up a slippery slope: challenging, if not discouraging and of questionnable value. It becomes increasingly evident that unless the mainstream does start to get involved, then leaving it to a rump of environmentalists is going to achieve little (see previous blog ‘Death To The Environmentalist’.)
One environment, one humanity, one survival.
Environmentalists Do Climate Camps, The Mainstream Takes A Flight
September 1, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
Many of us in the UK will remember Swampy, the environment activist who blocked construction of the A30 dual carriageway to Exeter for several days in the 90s by living in a tunnel he and his friends had dug in the path of the bull-dozers. Swampy is, apparently, still joining protests and living the message through having a very low environmental footprint, however the A30 was completed along with the rest of the road building programme and his bravery seems to have little impact upon the need for action on the environment. Like the Greenham Common camp, his actions raised public awareness because they brought a damaging operation to public notice, but changed little.
This weekend, there is a Climate Camp at Blackheath in Southeast London. Those attending will mostly know each other and, like Swampy and the Greenham Ladies, be regarded by the middle-class mainstream as eccentric losers and bludgers who have no hope of changing anything.
My personal view is that they are unlikely to achieve much in terms of altering public perceptions, and change will only come about when the mainstream of society get on board. But they are to be admired where they live according to their message of living a life with a low environmental footprint.
However they stand against the flood as it seems that the entire human world has been seduced by the Western model of exploiting natural resources for financial gain and economic growth, and our respectable middle-classes lead the way. People are admired and respected for being rich, especially when they are self-made or have become powerful within a corporation. Indeed Western-style free enterprise societies have created a sort of Nirvana, or refound Eden (see Reinventing Eden by Carolyn Merchant) for the better-off. People get what they want when they want it, can go anywhere they want in the World and consume without a thought. In fact for many, consumption is an end in itself, proving their wealth and position, and attesting to man’s dominion over the natural world.
We know that the environmental footprint of the average American or European is many times that of a citizen of India or China, and dozens of times that of the average African and it seems that we Westerners are intent on keeping hold of every bit of what we have. We also know that the billions of people in rapidly developing countries aspire to have what we in the West have, and that populations are growing.
The logic is inescapable: we can’t go on like this, and something has to change. This, of course, is exactly what Swampy and his environmentalist friends have been arguing for many years, but in spite of being right, they are still on the outside. Why?
In The Observer this weekend, Peter Beaumont offers some insight which fits in nicely with my Death To The Environmentalist blog (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/30/peter-beaumont-climate-camp-protesters ) suggesting that the problem is “not a lack of conviction….: it stems, rather, from an obsession with its own structures and its relationship with the media and police… (and) from a preoccupation with measuring its achievements in terms of protests it has undertaken rather than a series of achievable goals that those outside the camp movement can easily identify with.”
The UK Government along with several in Europe are at last saying that we must deal with climate change and are ramping up environmental protection, not in response to the countless demos, camps, meetings and action by environmentalists, but to the realities facing us. These realities must be accepted by the middle-class, environmentalist-hating mainstream as they are the ones who will be asked to change their lifestyles in ways that they perceive to be negative. They also have the biggest environmental footprints and could have the biggest impact on our country’s emissions.
Environmentalists know how to do it, the mainstream needs to do it, a common purpose and direction are missing.
Gaia and The Greens
August 26, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
James Lovelock, the scientist responsible for the Gaia theory, today (Wednesday, August 26) describes environmentalists who campaign on climate change but ignore population growth as irrational, ignorant or “hiding from the truth”.
I rather subscribe to both the Gaia theory and to the idea that humanity will have to control it’s population at some point. The Gaia theory is that the Earth will tend to keep our atmosphere and biosphere constant within narrow limits until a certain point when, if the pressures on it continue, it will change rapidly to a new status which could involve dramatically different conditions across the globe. This would be cataclysmic for today’s life forms and only the most hardy would survive to rebuild.
The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is a pressure on the global system that could push it towards a ‘Gaia shift’, and it’s increase since the industrial revolution has been alarming and is still gathering pace. If you compare it to a chart of population growth, the two are very similar.
The effects of the increase in CO2 include storing more of the sun’s heat in the atmosphere, thus ‘Global Warming’, but we are also seeing an increase in the acidity of our oceans, which means that it is more difficult for organisms to use CO2 to make their shells, and can result in shell materials being dissolved. To put this in context, calcium carbonate shells and reefs built by tiny marine organisms account for all the chalk and limestone on the planet, and there is a great deal more spread through the oceans as living or recently dead organisms. If this material dissolves, it realeases yet more CO2 into the atmosphere and prevents more shells being made. If you think this through, it is a vicious cycle and not the only one we face.
The point is, the more CO2 we release by buring fossil fuels, the more is released from other sources around the planet. And even if humans were not responsible for global warming, even if it were true that we are going through a very rapid ‘natural’ cycle as some believe, then surely it would make sense for us to reduce our global warming gas output so as not to exacerbate a dangerous trend?
We cannot escape the logic that the more people there are, the more CO2 we will release by burning fossil fuels, an effect that will be magnified many fold as they all aspire to be richer and consume more.
There is much that we can, and must, do to mitigate our environmental impact, and this starts with each of us as individuals. According to Jonathan Porritt, the UK Government is very comitted to action on climate change and to helping individuals and communities play their parts whilst the government handles things at a national and international level: let’s hope so!
Internationally, the Copenhagen conference in December will be key in moving things forward; in fact in instigating a step change in the way governments behave.
We must make a start on working out how to control population growth, which does not mean that we put on hold reducing our energy use and environmental footprint: in fact that has to be where we start because it will take effect much more quickly than any population measures.
This all comes back to my “Death to The Environmentalist” blog: we can no longer be ‘greens’ and the rest but must pull together to stabilise the situation now as far as we can. People who believe that there is a problem need to work in concert, bringing their different expertises and energies to bear on its many facets, including global warming, biodiversity, habitat protection, equalisation of resources and population control.
Dr Lovelock is in good companyas Sir David Attenborough, Jane Goodall and Jonathon Porritt have all said that we must address the population issue.
To take a one-sided view and work as if the other stake-holders didn’t have a case is a recipe for disaster in the form of a Gaia shift.
Death to The Environmentalist! One Environment, One Humanity, One Survival.
August 17, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
We are all in this together: ‘environmentalists’ were campaigners who believed they saw a problem and tried to persuade people. Now the reality of environmental destruction is right in our faces and people who understand the pickle we are in can only help us to cope with an increasingly unpredictable climate.
We ALL have a choice -
A. Wake up and smell the coffee and work out how we can modify and improve our lifestyles so that we have a less negative impact on the environment that sustains us or
B. Let it all hang, take chance on it all being OK and bequeath our kids whatever remains.
If you are in Group A, congratulations! There’s lots of advice and information available, or you may be able to get out there and help others.
If you are in Group B, imagine WHAT IF the International Panel On Climate Change (thousands of scientists) and almost all of the World Governments are right and climate change and habitat destruction IS a reality?
Technology cannot solve the problem on its own – it can’t put the oil and coal back under the ground as a resource or restore extinct species and ecosystems. Nor can it prevent the sea levels rising during the coming decades.
Can you actually take that risk? Isn’t it time to think about how you can contribute to a future for yourself, the children and their children?
And let’s face it, if you consume less and waste less and destroy less, you will save money and your world will be a nicer place. You’ll even come to feel good about it!
One Environment, One Humanity, One Survival.