Economy irrelevant

Call it simplistic, but there simply is no economy without the environment. Blaming others for our own inaction is not the work of a mature mind. Setting business, lifestyle or jobs first ahead of the climate is not an option. Short term economic gains cannot be rationalised against long term viability of agriculture, water and known ocean borders.

Any person with a view to the survival of the world as we know it must embrace change. I for one choose to have no car, travel in a car very rarely and instead walk, cycle or take public transport everywhere and have become vegetarian to reduce my carbon footprint.

If I get cold I put on a jumper, I jump on the spot to warm up (try it!). If I get hot I take myself to a cool spot or wear less clothing. I don’t turn on heating or cooling unless it is sub zero or above 40 degrees- and you know what people can survive a few hours in sub-optimal temperatures. If I can survive on a low-meat, low-diary lifestyle, why can’t all adults?

I would make only one exception- pensioners and the disabled should be able to have greater carbon credit and other transport allowances. The rest of us need a wake up call. If we are fat, it is because we are lazy, we simply live a sedative life.

If the climate is under threat then join the dots and take out the bad things, plan trees to allow the planet to repair itself. Deep down people know when what they are doing is to excess and they feel bad for it, the thing is to never dismiss it and become apathetic.

Look to other countries for blame only if you wish to make the lives of your grandchildren akin to nomadic refugees. This is not a joke. Our excuses for inaction however most certainly are a joke.

5 things I’d like to see in 2008

Its a new year and everything is good!

The birds are singing, people walk around dressed casually for the warmth, the stock market is crashing and I am optimistic we are going to make some progress this year.

Five things I’d like to see this year are:

1. A global recession, another one we “have to have”, in order to bring some reality perspective back into the picture. Economic slowdowns lead to reduced environmentally destructive development- a positive.
2. Any one of the three Democrats to take the presidency in the USA. Not that it matters a great deal, the USA is much less significant on the world stage. Except for its battle-hardened military.
3. Australian Government back-flip on the proposed $31billion tax cuts at election time- they were forced into it, nobody needs it, and it only adds fuel to the inflation fire.. Ditch it!
4. An inspirational leader to step forth and lead a sustainability revolution.
5. For people to put selfishness to the side for just once and get behind the “revolutionary” leader/campaign.  Definitely need a swanky agency to come up with a more exciting label than “sustainability revolution”

Sounding more and more like a hippy these days… I promise I don’t have a beard (couldn’t grow one if I tried) nor do I posses any illegal or decriminalized substances. Trees, I like them but hugging them gets ones clothes all dirty.

My indulgence is food and wine, I unashamedly admit

Feel free to post the things you’d like to see in 2008 as a comment.

Where are the heros?

With each and every passing week of news the picture of the evidence of global warming are irrefutable, the consequences of our current trajectory are dire and gosh, it is easily to get depressed or and cynical about the future and say “eh, why bother, we’re stuffed!”.

The best way to ensure the massive consequences of the worst projections is to bury the head in the sand, point the finger at others and just carry on blissfully ignorant of the result of current lifestyles. Whilst we cannot ignore the onset of climate change/global warming, we still act as if it is something for others for fix for us and for some magical technology to solve for us. Something that can be simply bolted on to every appliance, every vehicle, every engineered piece of equipment and counter-balance everything we do in our lives. Fat chance people. The only way to do this would be to extract CO2 from the atmosphere- and I don’t see this happening through some scientific wizardry.

With all the false prophets propping up about so-called solutions, reduced impact power generation, lower-emission vehicles, carbon-offset this and that, it is as if corporations can benevolently and conveniently play with the fringes of our activities to fix it all. I even saw an advertisement for a credit card that donates money to offset programs and is squirted with green ink which obviously makes the owner feel better about their purchase when they buy that air-conditioner unit on the card then plug it into the fossil fuel grid so that they can pretend they temporarily live in a 20 degree climate at all times. Hilarious- but also sad at the simple way in which we allow ourselves to be conned into false prophets.

I despair not so much for the future and the consequences on our diverse peoples, wildlife, ecosystems and coastal communities that are going to dissapear. I despair for nothing more than the lack of the champion for the cause. I meant the real champion, not the Al Gore and a neat power point preso, not the Bono and Gedof with egos bigger than the continent of Africa. I mean we need a real hero. Someone that not only has charisma, money and power/influence, but someone that leads by example and is not afraid of ridicule and has no hidden agenda.

For me, Mr George Monbiot is the closest thing I have to a hero, he is capable of absorbing huge amounts of information and assessing them from a global perspective and writing some incredibly considered pieces. He lobbies for causes he believes are important for the future of communities, animals and the environment. He is prepared to reach out over the airwaves and the internet and through his own books to try and show people a more idealistic alternative to some of our problems. Many of the solutions run in such a way that caters for human-kinds rather selfish perspectives and also leverages our unique creativity.

It is hard to find someone that you agree with 100% and I disagree with his views on globalisation being a positive, as I feel that localisation is the only way forwards once you factor in the tyranny of distance and the carbon cost of goods and services over distance. Likewise his views on genetically modified food- if we can make crops more durable and less susceptible to disease whilst still preserving the original seeds for the future around the world, then lets move on and do it.

Heros, it is an old-fashioned concept in a world where the anti-hero runs supreme and captures the media interest and sells magazines. I firmly believe that what the world needs now is a hero to step up and take the mantle and show us that we can and will overcome our short-sighted state of excess consumption and growth. Someone analyical, charismatic, compassionate but tempered by a long-term view that no matter who we are, we NEED the planet that supports us.

Any species that destroys its own habitat… soon destroys itself. We can do better than that!