Most of us are addicts…..
January 11, 2012 by Doug Kennedy
I read in the New York Times that people in the States (Land Of The Free, subject to terms and conditions and having money) are having to think twice about knocking down the old house and building a brand new one when they move, and of students brewing their own coffee rather than buying a moccachino in the cafe, or using library books instead of buying them. Good! Even if it’s only temporary.
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.
A Walk In The Countryside – Get Involved In Nature’s Resurgance
August 14, 2011 by Doug Kennedy
[SinglePic not found]It is an August Sunday in Cuddington, in rural South Buckinghamshire. The air is a mild 20 degrees centigrade and an occasional breeze wafts the ripe wheat, and the sun has a pleasant intensity when it moves out from behind the broken cloud.
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.
[Gallery not found]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!
[SinglePic not found]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.
[SinglePic not found]One Sunday’s News: What Is Important?
May 2, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
From one Sunday newspaper today, May 2nd 2009:
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.
Climate Change Deniers Aren’t Like Scientists
April 19, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
Last November, illegally obtained emails were publicised widely by climate change deniers, most strident among them Nigel Lawson, who claimed that the scientists must be exagerating their findings and not sharing the real data.
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.
It ain’t happening, but it is..
February 7, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
Headline 1 – Sceptic Scientists Demonstrate Climate Is Warming Up
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.
Climate Shenanegans and Does What Scientists Say Matter?
January 29, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
“What blooming weather: so much for global warming!” is a cry I have heard more than once as we suffer a cold winter.
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.’
Global Warming is not the problem….
January 7, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
Too many people: an idyll changes to nightmare.
December 12, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
We visited the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford yesterday to see what it is like having been substantially rebuilt over past few years. It is now a modern and fascinating museum inside it’s lovely old Cotswold stone shell and well worth a visit. Entry is free too!
We focused on the modern and nineteenth century paintings on the 3rd floor on this occasion, which include a couple of rooms of Pre-Raphaelite works. One is a panoramic view from a hill over Jerusalem painted at the end of the 19th century, and it made me stop and think. The walled city of Jerusalem sits on it’s hill top surrounded only by countryside where sheep graze and olive groves quietly stand. Peace radiates from the painting and you want to join the painter and contemplate the history, significance and beauty of the scene laid out as it had been for thousands of years.
I pondered, with some horror, what it must look like now: the dreadful Isreali concrete wall, the settlements on stolen land, roads, fences, factories, cars, rubbish, building sites. An all the hidden tragedies of people being evicted from houses they have owned and occupied for generations because Israelis want to settle East Jerusalem and make it all their own, the poverty, the overcrowding and hatred, the guns and the politics.
It struck me strongly that all this ugliness results from the explosion in population and is as parable for the World. We have gained, many of us, prosperity, less manual labour, fast travel and better health but at a huge cost. As that cost begins to amount to destruction of the environment that we live in, humans must stop and work out what they actually want.
The global population has more than doubled in my lifetime (I’m 60) and we are trashing the planet – mass extinctions of whole species, vast destruction of forests, tons of trash floating in the oceans, coral reefs dying, and global warming. In a couple of generations we are also using up all the earth’s resources, oil gas and coal in particular, and what right do we have to do this? Future generations are going to inherit our nuclear and other waste but little of use.
And do we like a World with too many people? Do we like being in crowded places, competing for food, water and space? Do we welcome people into our land from places where there are not sufficient of these resources? Aren’t we all constantly trying to create ‘our own space’ and ‘get away from it all’? Are we happier or less happy with a higher popuplation? For the great majority, the answers are No, No, No, Yes and less happy.
We can’t return to the 19th century painter’s idyll of Jerusalem, but unless we are prepared to accept that the sort of conflict and competition for space and destruction that is going on there will be repeated thousands of times in bigger and bigger theatres around the World; unless we want our children and their children to live in a nightmare World, we need to start working out how to bring the global human population down.
If we don’t start work on this now, then chaos will result, either caused by humans or by the environment, or both.
I heard a business man say the other day that he knew about risk management, and that the risks of global chaos were too high to ignore: we need to act.
Climate Change Or A Pop Star? No Contest
October 18, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
The BBC 10pm news on Saturday evening had a brief item on a climate change protest at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire where the headline was that a policeman was injured and fences were pulled down. The film showed a policemen falling, or being felled, by the protesters and the commentary stated these facts. There were no interviews with protagonists nor journalists and no reasons or background were given.
The following item concerned the funeral of Stephen Gately of the band Boyzone which was attended by many stars and celebrities: it was a great deal longer, and did include background and interviews.
I did my grumpy-old-man bit and said that I’d write to the BBC to complain about the imbalance and their priorities.
This morning, I picked up my Observer newspaper (left-of-centre liberal broadsheet) to find the funeral in the centre of the front page and also taking up the entirey of page 3. Was this because the Observer is in financial trouble and needs circulation more than it needs to retain it’s reputation as a serious newspaper? I suggest that it was.
Stephen’s untimely death was a human tragedy (not a national tragedy as stated on the BBC I suggest) and touched many peoples’ hearts and in particular his family, friends, colleagues and fans. It also attracted A-list celebrities which would attract a crowd anywhere. The getting-together of folk in this way is heart-warming.
Climate change protests are NOT heart-warming, and the fact that a thousand nutters were willing to cause mayhem at some powerstation in Nottinghamshire was not going to have anything like the appeal of the funeral. But climate change is a turn-off anyway.
In attempting to get a campaign going locally I feel increasingly isolated and like the protesters: I may (or may not) be right, but I’m a bit of a pain in the arse and lack the pizzazz of a funeral.
The UK Express Is Heading For The Buffers
October 9, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
(Note: An item in the 6pm news today tells how the UK energy regulator is warning of energy shortages and huge price hikes in the coming years. This blog was written this morning BEFORE the announcement – nice timing!)
Renewable energy is very much in the public eye these days and the UK has an enormous looming energy problem owing to years of vacillation on policy, and complacency because the UK had it’s own oil and gas (now largely depleted). All the money from these resources has been spent and virtually none was invested in energy for the future. Now our nuclear power stations are mostly going out of commission and we didn’t develop the nuclear technology that we invented to create an exportable UK-based nuclear industry. In the meantime, the take-up of renewable energy has been pathetic owing to lack of investment and direction at government level, and a very damaging application of the planning laws that has prevented many wind farm and solar developments from being started. The government is talking about turning this situation around in the Energy Transition white paper, but nothing in that is even close to implementation and there is no sense of urgency, although that situation might change after the Copenhagen summit.
In the news today we are told that the UK needs to invest billions of pounds in developing energy infrastructure or we will be almost entirely dependent upon imported gas, which puts us in a terribly weak position and vulnerable to the vagaries of other countries, such as Russia. We have seen this coming for many years but we now have a huge national debt and it is difficult enough to work out how to repay the debt we have, let alone investing further billions in new projects.
I have an investment interest in a UK company called PV Crystalox Solar. This is the largest UK business working in renewable energy producing photo-electric cells which are widely exported. The shares have suffered this year as the market for their product has greatly reduced at a time when the World drastically needs these technologies to be used. Interestingly, one problem for PVhas been that the Spanish government were providing grants for people to erect solar panels and sell electricity back to the national grid, but the take-up was so huge that they have put a cap on it, stopping further applications for the moment.
The UK government is still talking about doing the same thing but haven’t yet, probably because they are afraid that they’ll loose tax revenue (in VAT and company tax from energy companies) if they do. Some investment in the electricity market and grid is also required, but there are huge benefits for people in installing solar and other power generation in their homes and for the country in setting up wide-spread micro-generation, especially for energy security and cost in the coming years. There are also, obviously, substantial environmental benefits.
So we seem to have a situation where people are interested in taking up renewable energy technologies, the UK government desparately needs to solve the energy problem and The Earth systems that support us need us to stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. However, nothing substantial is happening in the UK and renewable energy companies are having a tough time keeping their businesses going when they should be thriving.
It feels like being a passenger in a train in which the driver is having an argument with the guard and is not at the controls as the train progresses inexorably towards the buffers.