Time To Reconnect

I’m not an economist.

I’m not a scientist.

I’m not an industrialist.

Maybe that means that I can take a more detached view of things....

I have been reading articles about biodiversity and cultural diversity, and the links between the two. I don’t need to explain that – if you’re interested you can read about it yourself. Suffice it to say that it has been very clearly established, by the UN amongst others, that there is a very clear connection between the two things. Areas on the globe which have strong cultural diversity, evidenced for instance by the variety of languages, also have strong biodiversity, as indicated by the number of species of animals and plants.

Similarly, where cultural diversity has been eclipsed by the shadow of globalisation, biodiversity has also suffered.

The survival of life on this planet depends upon the maintenance of biodiversity, and this depends upon the maintenance of cultural diversity. Take a look at (for instance) some of the indigenous peoples in South America. They are by and large content (except when their homelands are being destroyed by globalisation), and have developed a way of life which is in harmony with their environment. They are not interested in ‘growth’, and exist in a steady state economy. They maintain their own culture, and live in a sustainable way.

What a lesson for the rest of us.

I recently travelled from Cornwall to London by coach. You can see a lot through the window of a coach, and I admit that as we left Heathrow to head for the centre of London I was bewildered by the sheer volume of traffic. I found myself wondering how on earth we, the ‘civilised’ society, arrived in this horrendous situation, in which we are too busy chasing meaningless goals to enjoy life.

Can the driver for all of this be greed?

People have ambitions, fuelled by advertising, by ‘competitive materialism’, by dreams of what their perfect life might be, and yet it has been well established that having more money doesn’t automatically enhance happiness. George Soros, financier of note, counts his annual income in the billions of dollars. For an individual, that obscene quantity of cash is meaningless – what can he, personally, achieve with a billion that he couldn’t achieve with a million? And would he really suffer if he only had $100,000 a year?

I listened to an interview with Peter (now Lord) Mandelson this morning. I happen to think that he is one of the best brains in politics, but I was depressed to hear him state that the global economy would double over the next twenty years. Our leaders are convinced that healthy economies are growing economies - but I know what happens when you keep on blowing up a balloon!

Perhaps in the present crisis he needs to say such things, but he seems to have glossed over our impending double whammy of Climate Change and Peak Oil: these two little gremlins are likely to scotch any ideas of a growing economy – indeed even a ‘steady state’ economy will be very difficult to achieve under the pressures of peak oil and energy descent. And the general consensus (leaving out 10 Downing Street) is that peak oil will be with us at some point between now and 2012. Unfortunately Downing Street thinks peak oil will not be with us before 2030.

But in any event, some time soon we are all going to be forced to accept the conclusion that globalisation no longer works and that growth is no longer possible.

We in the Western World have become so disconnected from our natural surroundings that we no longer appreciate what our environment has to offer. I took a young friend of mine (age 10) out for a drive earlier this year and discovered that she didn’t know what a foxglove was – and we live in the country. How can this be?

I sat in my parked car this morning and watched a minute insect scurrying around on my windscreen: I became fascinated by the miracle of such a small creature containing enough energy to allow it to move so quickly over such long distances without recharging. Later I watched a couple of ravens lazily going about their business above, in no great hurry, and quietly gossiping with each other. We miss so much in our perpetual frenetic rush towards ‘more’ and ‘better’. Even in these economically uncertain times, I saw on the Freecycle website that someone is giving away a 21” CRT TV, presumably because they have upgraded to an up-to-date slim line model. And yet I am certain that the older model works perfectly well.

The older I get, the more I am convinced that the secret of a happy life is to be content with what you have. We need to relearn respect for our environment. This way we may just learn to deal with our climate and energy crises before it’s too late. But this needs to be a ‘bottom-up’ exercise, not top down.

No individual can do it alone, but many individuals, over time, by setting an example, working within their own communities, and talking about what they do, can – indeed, must.

A Tale of Modern Farming

This morning I happened to listen to ‘Farming Today’ on BBC Radio 4. I was fascinated to hear a farmer explaining how he is managing to stay in profit even in our current and increasing recession.

Clearly the first point to be made is that he and his family work extremely hard, with no expectation of such soft options as weekends off.

Secondly, he sells all his produce through farmers’ markets. He started with one, but now sells through 25, and employs a full-time butcher.

The third thing he is doing, to help offset the increasing cost of fertiliser (currently £300 per tonne), is to extend the grazing area for his cattle, so that with less input he produces more meat, but from a greater area.

But this gentleman made it very clear that he doesn’t believe in organic farming, preferring, as he puts it, ‘traditional’ methods.

In the same programme we heard about a new report by Professor Dick Godwin, commissioned by the Royal Agricultural Society of England, which suggests that our soil is barely fit for purpose, and no longer able to sustain the increasing demands of intensive food production.

He puts this down mostly to bad drainage and bad soil condition. There is evidently extensive rainwater run-off and resultant soil erosion because the soil in its present condition cannot absorb the water, while too much rain leaves the fields unworkable for farm machinery. He recommends good soil management and better drainage as being the solutions, but made it clear that there is nowhere for farmers to go for expert advice.

Now I am not an expert. All I have to help me is a little common sense. But it seems to me that our successful farmer mentioned above is, despite his protestations to the contrary, leaning ever so slightly in the direction of organic farming, by reducing the amount of oil-based fertiliser per acre on his land.

He is unconsciously following the recommendation of Prof. Godwin and starting to improve the condition of his soil. He may even find in a few years time that, assuming these trends continue, organic farming is the only way to remain profitable.

Am I imagining the contradiction; that by going organic he thinks he would be abandoning ‘traditional’ methods of farming? He must be a lot younger than me – or else he has a very different take on the word ‘tradition’!

Dumbing Down

I have a bus pass (by reason of my age). So I have started using the bus instead of my car. The savings I make by leaving the car at home are essential, as I have joined the army of those euphemistically referred to as being on ‘limited income’, or, sometimes, ‘fixed income’; or even, not to put too fine a point on it, ‘low income’. That last description could be considered by some to be tactless, or even politically incorrect – but that’s because it is the most accurate. To be described as ‘poor’ is of course unacceptable!

It’s all relative of course – the fact that I have a car to leave at home puts me a cut above many in this country, and makes me unbelievably rich compared to millions in the world.

In this country, particularly in the media, we seem to have arrived at a point where we decline to face certain truths (in case we offend) while at the same time over-clarifying other truths to the point of imbecility.

It is both fascinating and irritating to listen to certain broadcast interviewers, mostly those with enlarged egos, who constantly interrupt their interviewees to clarify that which needs no clarification for the benefit of an audience who (they assume) have not been keeping up with events for at least a year! I get particularly frustrated when listening to ‘Any Questions’ chaired by (or should I say ‘hosted’ by) Jonathon Dimbleby, son of a broadcasting genius, friend of the heir to the British throne, and patroniser par excellence. The amount of air time he spends interrupting the panel to over-elaborate, or over explain, for the sake of listeners who may have no idea what the context of the question is, must be a significant percentage of available air time – and yet his listening audience are likely to be well informed, or they wouldn’t be listening in the first place!

Another truth which could do with being addressed with greater clarity and fewer euphemisms is the fact that many of us are too fat! Yes, I dared to use the F word...

There is so much talk of ‘clinical obesity’, Body Mass Index and the rest that most of us who are too fat (yes, that includes me!) are not made to face up to the truth – I like my food and I like my wine, and physically, I am reluctant to over indulge in exercise.

Back to the bus-ride.

I have noticed that small children on the bus are almost always eating, crisps, or chocolate, or biscuits or some other comforting snack produced by a loving parent in order to quieten the child while the parent concentrates on ‘texting’!

So it follows that a substantial number of teenagers on the same bus have not kicked the habit instigated by their parents, and are chewing on something.

And when the bus slows at the pedestrian traffic lights, to allow a stream of students to cross to or from the Pizza Hut or MacDonalds which have been thoughtfully built near the college, I am tempted so much to leap up and shout, “You are all eating far too much junk and it is going to kill you!!”

Of course, it wouldn’t make any difference – the explanation would be too simple to be taken seriously.

So perhaps I should just go home and concentrate on eating and drinking less, and taking more exercise!

The Odd Behaviour Of Governments

There seems to be no limit to the bizarre behaviour of nations and their governments.

Recent news from the Arctic Ocean makes me think of a hungry wild animal fighting off others so that it can eat its own leg.

The expanse of Arctic ice has shrunk in both area and thickness to an unprecedented degree, so that it is now possible to circumnavigate the ice. The reduction in the ice area is caused by global warming which itself is caused largely by our profligate burning of various types of fossil fuel. As the area of light-reflecting ice reduces, the area of heat-absorbing water increases. The extra heat absorbed from the sun causes more ice-melt.... and so on.

I am a mere private citizen, and what seems obvious to me may not be as simple as I think it is – but logic suggests to me that the way forward is to burn less fossil fuel.

But logic suggests to national governments that we should take full advantage of this dramatic ice melt to tap into hitherto inaccessible oil fields to produce more fossil fuels so that we can melt the ice even faster!

Not only that – the nations concerned have already started squabbling over boundaries, borders, mineral rights and the like.

One good thing though – if we melt all the ice there won’t be a shortage of water (although it will mostly be in the wrong place)!

Now there's a funny thing....

I was invited by some close friends to accompany them on the Gay Pride Parade in Truro, Cornwall, UK.

I remember that my immediate response at the time was ‘what date is it on?’, and when I found I was not busy on the day, of course I accepted the invitation – I don’t deny I was flattered to be asked.

I suppose that I never really realised the extent to which the gay community is not accepted; the extent to which the presence of straight people on the parade might be symbolically important.

I took my camera, and after a bit I started looking out for disapproving faces in the crowd to photograph – and there were a few! There were also a few spectacular extroverts to shoot; but by and large what was the most revealing aspect of the parade was that most of the participants were, very obviously, ‘just plain folk’. There were many colourful and explicit T-shirts, numerous rainbow-coloured neckerchiefs, bandanas, wrist-bands and the like, and the behaviour of the whole parade was responsible, good-humoured and positive. So why, I found myself wondering, is so much fuss made? Why do some people find this particular minority so hard to take? Because when you get up close and personal, they are all so blasted normal!

I admit to having a very entrenched prejudice, and it is against bigotry. I am afraid that in Cornwall we are guilty of being a little slow to accept that members of minority groups, whether by race or by sexual orientation, are in all important respects equal to the rest of us and deserving of an equal amount of respect.

But today in Truro I believe we may have moved a little further down that road towards civilisation!

Unconsidered Opinions

I read somewhere that for the first time, more than half the world’s population now lives in an urban environment. Only just.

When we see TV programmes about famine and war in Africa, the cameras are usually focussed on rural communities – or refugee camps which have been set up in rural areas but have now become tent towns. And that is of course as it should be: we need to be aware of the suffering of those desperately poor and mistreated people, so that we can all help in any way we can to improve their quality of life.

But that aside, I have been getting a little irritated by market research companies in the UK, or rather, I suppose, by the mono-vision of their clients.

A little while ago, I took part in a research project (it doesn’t matter what for) and was very happy to receive a modest fee for doing so. I was also more than happy to put myself on the research company’s mailing list to be informed of future projects in which I might take part. In fact I looked at a few other companies as well; and since then I have been getting frequent e-mails about forthcoming projects on all sorts of issues.

I suppose that I shouldn’t be surprised that I am always outside the age range that they are looking for (although I had thought that the ‘grey pound’ was quite an influential currency these days), but I am particularly irritated by the fact that these researchers are only ever interested in the opinions of people living in London, or such places as Reading or Swindon.

I can accept that users of Nokia phones between the ages of 20 and 30, or young mum’s using disposable nappies, are more interesting than keen gardeners between 65 and 80, but why should a young mum in Reading be more interesting to the marketeers than the same person in, say, Bovey Tracey?

The point I would highlight as an example is that the young mum in Bovey Tracey, as well as being just as important as the young mum in Reading, is subject to different day-to-day influences than her Reading counterpart, so her answers to questions would be different. The implication here is that the nearly 50% of the population (I’m guessing) who live outside the major towns are a completely unconsidered market by those companies who use the market research organisations. And it may be that the rural population doesn’t have as much money to spend as our urban cousins – but all the same, disposable nappies (or almost anything else) are used about as much by our rural young mum as by the city-dwelling equivalent.

Aren’t these companies interested in the fact that rural opinions may be different, but may also be just as important from a marketing point of view?

I suppose that I know the answer before I ask the question – it must be easier to find 30 young mums using disposable nappies who can take an hour out to come to a central location to answer questions about Huggies in London than in Bovey Tracey.

OK, so why not go a stage further and just do the research in the nearest branch of Tesco?

Well, obviously you couldn’t do that, because you would get an unbalanced response!

Exactly....

The Politics Thing

People don’t vote. People don’t bother to turn up for meetings. People turn to the sports page first. The tabloids print biased headlines and very little else of substance.

On the subject of political matters, we are, as a race, pretty ignorant. How many people do you know who can name the Minister for the Environment for instance? And yet our environment is the biggest single issue people are talking about these days.

BUT if something goes wrong these same people complain like mad. They are very specific in their complaints too. Whose fault is it? Gordon’s of course!

Now, I don’t hold any strong feelings about Gordon Brown or anyone else in Westminster – how could I? I’ve never met them. But I hope that I can take a balanced view.

Can the PM do anything about world oil prices? No.
Can he do anything about the rising price of food or fuel? No. (It all goes back to the price of oil – and if he were to substantially cut the duty on fuel he would have to find the money from somewhere else, by raising a tax or two – and listen for the protests then!)

And would things have been any better if Mr Teflon Blair was still at No.10? Of course not. But he was smooth enough to get out of town. Am I wrong to suspect that he saw all this coming and that’s why he decided to go?

Would things be any better if David Cameron was in charge? Hardly! It wouldn’t change anything.

To misquote a certain US President – It’s the environment, stupid!

We have to be helped, by our politicians, to get used to higher fuel and food prices, because over time it can only get worse. Whoever is in charge is going to have to acknowledge that very drastic action is needed to cope with the triple-whammy of Peak-Oil, Climate Change and Credit Crunch.

My question is, which of our leaders, prospective or otherwise, is going to be prepared to make himself very unpopular by facing up to these challenges firmly and soon?

Whichever leader takes that option will have my vote!