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.
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.
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.
Canute The Optimist?
September 28, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
I’m not sure that King Canute was being an optimist when he commanded the tide not to rise and dampen his feet: in fact, he was being a pessimist and proving to his people that he was not infallible, and that the tide would not obey his command. He has become legendary because of that bit of wisdom.
We could do with that wisdom today: to know the limits our power and when to exercise our optimism.
We complain about immigration, and our legislators bulldoze half-empty refugee camps; but the tide of migration from south to north, from poor to rich grows rapidly. Now the systems in Greece, Italy and Spain are under strain, and a wall between the USA and Mexico won’t stop the tide.
Why? Do people who live in nice warm countries really want to live in cold damp, overcrowded, foreign lands such as England? Probably not: the reasons are conflict, bad governance and lack of work and food: circumstances that make it impossible for people to better themselves.
But at the root, what is driving people to go through horrendous, life-threatening hardship, deserting all that is familiar, is over-population: the more people there are, the more competition there is for resources. The general result is poverty, starvation, environmental destruction (eg chop trees down around Manilla and the city floods) and conflict at local, regional and national levels. And as each person on this Earth adds to the environmental burden, especially whilst our behaviour is so out of control and we pay so little heed to what is sustainable, the drives to migrate are only increasing.
The tide is coming in and, whilst there is the pressure of growing population behind it, we are as powerless to stop south-north migration and the conflict that will result as old King Canute was to stop the sea. But there are two differences: the first is that, unlike Canute, we are glad-eyed optimists who seem to believe that things will sort themselves out, or some technology will come along to do it for us; and second that Canute could do nothing about the sea and the moon, whereas humanity could tackle the problem of exploding population.
The Optimum Population Trust is a UK think tank that is trying to find some answers. www.optimumpopulation.org
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.
One Environment, One Humanity, One Survival (continued)
August 24, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
Now Athens is burning. It was California earlier in the year, Australia, Spain, CA and Greece last year and Indonesia the year before. These are the forests that give us life. My condolences to those who now have only ashes to look where there were trees, birds and wildflowers before.
The bad news keeps rolling in, be it forests, glaciers, weather, fish, endangered species, or our ability to take action. There are still many global warming deniers, such as Mr Roger Helmer MEP, but I say to them that even if you discount our CO2 emissions as a serious cause of environmnetal degredation, you cannot deny that many species are under threat as a result of human activity, that forests, fish and other natural resources are being plundered or destroyed and that we are bequeathing a legacy of toxic waste and empty oil wells to our children.
Are we worried? Well, it depends. I believe that most people in the UK are, but some typical attitudes include:
A. It’s all part of natural cycles and as individuals there’s no point in changing our behaviour. Anyway, business as usual is too much fun and recycling is a waste of time. And as for those low energy light bulbs, well, just see what the Daily Mail says about them!
B. Well, there may be something in it, but I’m sure the government and/or technology will sort it out. Business as usual. Anyway, at our hotel we’re saving the planet by putting notices in bathrooms to re-use your towels.
C. There are too many people on the planet and there’s not much we can do about it. No point in me acting as anything I do will be countered dozens of times by the Indians and Chinese.
D. I’m really worried as we’re definitely damaging the environment. We really shoudl do something about it, but I’ve got a meeting in Edinburgh today and Brighton tomorrow, and it’s just too busy right now. On hols in a couple of weeks in Phuket where I’m really goin to chill. Could do something on my return. Anyway, we’re recycling our stuff now and I’ve got some of those new bulbs to put in.
There are many people who believe that we have a real problem; many regard themselves as environmentalists and many work for NGOs and/or spend much of their spare time doing voluntary work. There are also environmentalists who only focus on their own behaviour, lifestyle and footprint and others who work hard to change others’ behaviours. But their efforts are very unfocused – each NGO has it’s own priorities for action and needs to maintain it’s unique profile and message: as with any corporation, others in the same field are competition. Thus the efforts of the thousands of activists around the country are diffused and often conflicting.
There are many in government who believe we have a real problem, and Ed Milliband (Department for Environment and Climate Change) is one of those. He has produced and interesting white paper which is worth looking at (The UK Low Carbon Transition Plan available to read at www.DECC.gov) but whilst the same Government is subsidising the coal industry at far higher rates than the renewable energy industry, and insisting that we need new coal fired power stations (albeit on the proviso that ‘Carbon Capture and Storage’, a technology that doesn’t actually exist yet, is incorporated), he has a fight on his hands to get it implemented.
Much depends upon the Copenhagen summit in December when heads of government are meeting to work out our next steps in combating climate change.
So, if we are worried, (which I believe we should be), what can we do? Based upon the still valid premise, ‘Think Globally, Act Locally:
1. Tell your MP that you are worried about global warming and ask what he/she is doing about the environment. Can they lobby for action and leadership at national level and for a real result at copenhagen
2. Tell your local politicians that you are worried about the environment, and for action on reducing energy wastage in housing, better planning rules relating to renewable energy sources (solar panels etc), local sources of food such as markets.
3. Act on your own environmental footprint – carbon emissions and domestic energy (see Energy Savings Trust and Zapcarbon.com), sources of food, amount of waste, use and abuse of local countryside.
4. The Big One – what is the impact of a human population that is growing exponentially? Do we want to live in World with half-again as many people as today? What is your, and your family’s part in that?
Above all, let us us act together for a better World for us and our children – there is no longer time or value in separating into environmentalists and normal people – we need to harness all of our expertise and energy to the tasks.