The UK does not have exclusivity in heading for environmental disaster. The problem is worldwide and is born of a system that admires the acquisition of vast personal wealth.
As @Geof_Cox said above “The problem is that what we know to be the right course is not necessarily the most profitable for investors.”
Business people pursue wealth, not ecological balance and long term durability.
In my locality, Farmers (they run businesses too), deliberately cut hedges again and again until they no longer exist in the search for ever increasing profitability.
Probably it is a minor thing compared to open cast strip mining, or indeed fracking, but destroy the hedges and you are destroying the habitat and food chain of a whole host of animals, insects, and birds.
Cut down all the trees for firewood, and you end up being cold in a desert.
As a species, humans are systematically destroying the environmental systems all over the globe in the search for profit.
Basically we are eating the seed corn that should be kept for future generations.
I used the word we deliberately as I include myself in this.
Just stop for a moment or two and look around your home at all the things that are made from fossil fuel derived plastic. Things that are convenient, and sometimes essential to our lifestyle, but which are made from a substance that took millions of years to create, and yet which we all use with gay abandon as if there is no tomorrow.
WE need to change our ways, and we need governments of all countries to help the people achieve their aims. Of course there’s no financial profit in that so it isn’t actually going to happen.
The heading on this post needs amending to; ‘The UK is on the road to environmental disaster !’ just like virtually all the other countries of the world.
In the fullness of time the planet will recover from the environmental disaster which is currently unfolding all around us, but the vast majority, if not all, of the human population will perish along the way.
Of course there’s a lot of truth in what you say Robert - but both the optimist and the realist in me are asking if your generalisations are too wide.
First, you talk about humans ‘as a species’ destroying the environment - but I don’t think this really holds true. What is true is that some past societies have indeed destroyed themselves through over-exploitation of their environments - but others have been sustainable for many thousands of years - and continue to be so as long as they are not drawn into the world capitalist system. So I don’t buy the ‘it’s human nature and there’s nothing we can do about it’ view (although it’s not uncommon in the more pessimistic corners of the environmental movement).
Second, you also generalise ‘business people pursue wealth’. This is my field - I have been a serial entrepreneur and worked in enterprise development, either on my own businesses, or as an advisor or researcher all my life. I have never found the prime motivation of entrepreneurs to be the pursuit of wealth. Most (including myself) frequently take decisions that they know will cost them money, but be for the best in other ways - socially, environmentally, etc. You have to make a clear distinction between entrepreneurs and investors - it is the latter, largely, that actually drive environmental destruction - and indeed drive farmers etc to behave irresponsibly, Believe me, if your prime motivation is to make money, don’t even try to start up your own business - go work for a bank then worm your way into investment fund management - it’s so much easier.
And lastly, you say look at all the fossil fuel products we have all bought - we are all responsible for all that environmental destruction. But are we? Do we really have the choice to buy products entirely without plastic components? In some ways, and to some extent, we may do - we are indeed partially guilty - but we are also the victims of huge powerful corporations and the media - and governments - they effectively control, and which are the ‘hidden persuaders’ that sell us all this stuff - and the empty promise that a lifestyle based on consuming more and more useless stuff will make us happy.
We are, in short - as consumers, as business people, and as human beings - all caught in an economic system and an ideology most of us (if we had the benefit of full information) would not have chosen.
To be honest I think the basic problem, be it in relation to environmental, economic, or social disaster, is simply one of too many people.
When any species becomes too numerous for its environment to support it, then the numbers simply have to drastically reduce. Whether it be by famine, pestilence, or warfare, it will happen if the world population continues to increase in number.
The peoples of the world use raw materials at a rate far beyond their natural replacement rate, and that is simply unsustainable. The basic problem is that we all live longer and longer, and more and more babies are born.
One day the oil and natural gas will run out, probably not in my lifetime, but I do feel for my grandchildren who are probably going to be the ones who are going to have to try and cope with situation.
As the environment continues to change, millions of people will be forced to either migrate or perish, and that will put even more pressure on the remaining temporarily supportive land areas.
It is said that the meek shall inherit the earth, and they probably currently live in very inhospitable places, but still have at least some semblance of knowledge of how to live off the land in harmony with nature rather than constantly destroying it.
No-one has mentioned Kier Starmer’s speech at the Labour party conference. I’m don’t have political activism in my blood, but can’t resist….
I remember with a sort of fondness, in the sense of ‘these belong to us’ - the nationalized industries of the past, the Water Board, the Electricity Board, the Gas Board, British Rail, the National Coal Board and others.
I heard Kier Starmer mention in his speech a new national industry – British Energy – a company to generate clean power.
Sounds good to me.
Hopefully, he really is on his way to bringing in, getting closer to, a real green growth super plan for the future of the UK, and getting to grips with the environment in the process.
I remember seeing a cartoon in Zimbabwe years ago referring to “the problem”.
The westerner said of the Africans, “Too many children !”.
And the African said of the west, “Too much stuff !”.
Again I agree with some of your thoughts Robert - especially that the most difficult aspect of climate/ecological breakdown for rich countries to handle - politically, socially and ethically - will be the mass migrations out of areas rendered unlivable or infertile. But I think you’re generalising too much again when you see overpopulation as as the key issue (making it in a sense everybody’s fault).
There is no real evidence that the Earth can’t sustain it’s current human population - which most experts project will begin to decline very soon anyway (see Danny Dorling’s book Slowdown).
The fact is, it’s very comforting for the relatively wealthy to frame environmental crisis as having a pretty natural cause like population - and there is often more than a hint not just of casting the blame on humanity as a whole, but on people living in poverty in other countries that have too many children.
But the facts are that the poor in general have little impact, while the rich are responsible for most of the damage. To focus on population is a distraction, when the essence of the problem is not that there are too many people, but that a relatively small number have been tricked into wildly irresponsible and unsustainable consumerism.
There has been a lot of discussion of this in the climate/ecological breakdown thread, eg…
Angela Rayner could be a contender maybe for a future PM, so long as she doesn’t use language that takes me back to the tiresome words of the old labour language of, brothers, delegates, compatriots, conference motions, and supporting constant strike action, or emulates the public ranting of Jeremy Corbyn when he was Labour’s leader.
A socialist, as I am, got tired of those words, and memories are long. It’s the centre ground for me.
I hope the Starmer/Rayner combo works out successfully.
Green should be the number one word these days, so maybe there’s a green word for ‘friends’ that could replace brothers, sisters, comrades, compatriots et al, in a political setting.
