Everywhere, humans altering the landscape,
not just governmental, but farmers, developers:
ourselves imposing designs on landscapes that
need follow their own evolutions or, as Darwin
might indicate, they become unfit for survival.
And so, the most transitory, those with least
claim to the future, gouging unmercifully through
nature’s processes, which include in their present
their future possibilities, persist in pulling the means
to live from under the feet of their grandchildren.
It seems no government is going to take the necessary steps for environmental or climate change. And until they do, private individuals will feel taking steps is pointless. Change will only occur when there is an atmosphere of emergency as during the Covid lock-downs, right now it’s life as usual for the most part.
It’s not as though the steps are unknown. The production of plastics must be curtailed immediately;
it seems appalling to me that, for one example, that plastic packaging as is used for putting butter and jam on individual slices of bread in the catering industry is a gross overuse that could easily be better managed. Why don’t we go back to re-usable bottles of milk? Why isn’t there a rationing system on air travel for holidaying purposes, on the consumption of meat, on the amount of packaging used in retail, on the unnecessary use of water? Why is their space travel for the pleasure of a wealthy few?
And how mad is prosecuting war, as Modi told Putin now “is not an era of war”. He knowing better than most as catastrophic conditions become ever more prevalent and temperature records continue to be broken.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres recently warned that the world is “sleepwalking to climate catastrophe.” Who, in twenty years time, will thank their parents and grandparents for caring so little about them and their planet that they over-looked such clear warnings and such clear evidence?
In nearly all the lists of what individuals can most usefully do, lobbying representatives comes near the top; they need to feel the fire. Talking about it is also considered vital to build the sense of imperative; the emergency is here, but we’re not all feeling the urgency yet.
