I remember as a child joining a school weekend trip to a hostel in the countryside. We were given a fair degree of freedom to roam the area but were warned not to walk across the nearby fields but to instead use the footpaths. When challenged with a why the teacher in charge told us about how each footprint destroys the food for the grazing stock. Like that made sense at age 10, Grass grows, there is always more the next day.
Yet every footprint each of us has does have an impact, what we use or destroy needs some replacement or it all gets used up. Have you ever stopped to think what is required to place a box of cornflakes on the table for breakfast? Think water, sunshine, fields, tractors, oil, rubber, factories, ovens, energy, transport, fuel, electricity, coal, trees. One 500g box of cornflakes. The complexity and depth of the chain is magnificent. It makes you wonder if life is just a little too complicated.
Perhaps I’m pushing this issue a little too much but I was delighted to read an article by David Hilyard of the Earthwatch Institute that spelled out a number of important points about the nature of the global challenges we face and the need we have to think differently.
Whilst his emphasis was to challenge the political and economic imperative to see wealth in terms of GDP he also discussed the effects of loss of bio-diversity and our poor responses to it – I think a number of other points are worthy of reading too.
Climate change has helped put the global environmental crisis on the map; but it is time to stop considering it as a single issue.
My point exactly! While governments make their statements and set their ambitious targets concerning emissions what are they doing in society to stave off the need for massive plundering of the limited resources that the world has? Whilst the governments spend money on alternative energy sources and burying Carbon Dioxide in the caves left behind by melted glaciers – we need to continue to grow “wealthier” (GDP) and spend more money; to buy ourselves back out of recession. Currently buy more is equivalent to destroy more. Does it solve the real problems?
Climate change is one part of the complexity we face and it is being seen in many quarters as the only problem to solve. Try the cornflake exercise on that one.
I suggest that we need to at keast lessen the heaviness of our steps, think more locally perhaps. Its unrealistic to expect that we will or even can revert to subsistence and self-sufficiency. Yet a few simple changes in behaviour can reduce the problem – have you thought of any lately?
About Peter
recently, there has been some massive flooding in the Philippines and Vietnam which i think is also due to Climate Change. the tropical storms in asia are somewhat getting stronger stronger each year.