RPG
Member Since: 23 Feb 2009
Location: The End of the Earth (West Cornwall)
Posts: 712
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| Climate Change and Why I Gave Up Being Green! |
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(Inspired by ND's post  )
I like the environment. I do. I like nature, animals, the countryside, untapped wildernesses, and it really annoys me that as a result of mankinds current and previous actions all of that is going to change and some, perhaps most, could be lost forever. So I used to be good - grow my own fruit and veg, source local produce, support local business, drive an "environmentally friendly" car, bought all those gadgets and gizmos to help me cut my gas and electricity usage including new insulation, boilers, showers, cookers, fridges, blah, blah, blah. I turn all my electrics off when not in use, I recycle everything I can, but one day I went online to calculate my "Green Footprint" and it said I needed 2.7 planets! I was being really good but it just didn't seem to be working. This, then, is my conclusion about being green:
1) Online Green Footprint calculators are a complete load of tosh, totally inacurate and probably contribute more to global warming through all that server space and wasted processing power they use in disseminating their tosh to the masses then they will ever help to save!
2) I got rid of my "environmentally friendly" car and bought a D3 because it will probably last me, and subsequent owners, a lot longer then the plastic pile of break-down-every-two-mintes-and-cost-as-much-as-a-D3-to-maintain poo I had before.
3) The Government love to put huge amounts of tax on our big cars and frequent fill-ups but the fraction of funding they give to alternative fuel technology R&D by comparison is peanuts. Glad to see they are serious about it! I mean, lets face it: if the governement were really serious about clamping down on the petrolhead then they would ban all non-commercial vehicles over 2.5litres or average less then 30mpg. But we all know they'd rather have the cash from the fuel and car tax to pay for all those expenses claims for flights to Brussels and pointless fact-finding missions on long-haul flights all around the world!
4) My D3 is so much more fun then the last POS.
5) I would buy all my food from local produce but there either isnt any or it costs 4 times as much AND I DONT WANT TO BUY ORGANIC! (Organic is also a load of old tosh and I'm not suprised Organic Farmers are now struggling. ). Perhaps if the Government were serious (and we have already established that they are not) then they might do well to significantly increase agricultural financial assistance to enable UK farmers to produce what UK consumers want when they want...it is perfectly possible (they can do it with flower farms!), but dont think the laws of capitalism are going to come and save you - not many will buy a UK melon for 4 times the price of a Spanish melon! And I know about the EU rules on agricultural aid and CAP funding and all that...but the same goes for the rest of the EU and the World, too!
6) The Government are making me buy all these power-hungry freeview boxes! And with it their might be a power-hungry plasma TV.
7) The Government want to give every child a laptop and every house broadband - so every house can have two or three TVs, two or three computers, two or three mobiles, two or three Freeview boxes....All of which last two or three years before they need an upgrade to the newest model or just die from poor build quality and get thrown in a rubbish heap in Africa to contaminate the land with toxic metals.
7) As for clothes and white goods and all that other stuff, well this and previous governments have done a pretty good job of eliminating UK manufacturing, so buying local really isn't an option! Made (non-environmentally-friendly) in China all the way, I'm afraid! Certainly when we look to Government support for UK Manufacturing we find....a few inter-departmental memos! Great!
8 ) As far as Walk-to-Work, is concerned thanks to the effects of many years of missgovernment and poor national health policy coupled with a big push on TVs and computers to reinforce the couch-potatoe nation and a lack of decent agricultural policy and local community planning initiatives that have led to a massive growth in one-stop-shop supermarkets selling all manner of "foods" we had never before heard of, the average UK citizen is now far larger and less fit then they used to be and so if we got most of the working population to walk to work we would find that they respire more quickly and expel large quantities of CO2 - a Greenhouse Gas and major contributor to Golbal Warming! Great, well thought-out plan, there!
I've thought about selling up and becoming a hippy traveller and living in a woods, but The Government don't like them, either! There are a whole spate of laws for that one!
So, it would seem to me that there is little point in the UK, or in Western Society in general, in trying to be "Green" because it is quite apparent that the Government wants the complete opposite. If this is a problem to you and you want to be green and eco-friendly then I'd suggest you started by replacing the Government (which isn't looking too healthy right now) , the Political System (which isn't looking too healthy right now) and Capitalism (which isn't looking too healthy right now) as these are by far the biggest stumbling blocks to reducing Global Warming, not the will of the people!
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 26th Jun 2009 1:12 pm |
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