You'll Hate This

 

I have come to the conclusion, after considerable amount of thought and contemplation, that when asked the question 'do you care about the planet?' the answer is... it depends what you mean!

Do you hate it yet?

Is there anything that I can do that would make the slightest bit of difference? Not really. Is that a cop out? Probably. I mean, maybe if every one of us did something then it would make a difference. But, not everybody will. More importantly, not everybody can. It sometimes strikes me that 'caring about the planet' is a rather middle class western ideal. That's not a bad thing, but the middle class west cannot dictate to the rest of the world that they cannot experience the gains and positives they have simply because now, after a century or so of causing the greater number of evils in the world affecting the planet.

For instance, being outraged by the burning of the Amazon is understandable but wanting the Brazilian government to stop the practice of using their land to develop crops of soya or for beef production is not really up to Western Europeans. Especially if we are complaining about the practice on one hand and then buying the produce, one way or another, with the other hand. And most people don't even seem to be aware  they are contributing to the problem because they are paying for it to happen. And it is not just in Brazil, the same slash and burn policy is happening all over the planet. So then we all need to buy sustainable products. And once again, sustainable products quite often come with a higher price tag and so once again, it's a middle class western privilege.

Consumer pressure en masse led by negative stories in the news or on tv will undoubtedly do more to make corporations change than anything I could do. Plus, I suspect that some corporations have a growing sense of their place in the world and don't want to destroy it as it kind of feeds them. It makes more sense for them to stop destroying things and find more eco-friendly ways of doing things and then selling that to consumers at a premium price but marketed as a price worth paying if you want to save the planet!

There are lots of things governments could do to help transition some of these things. Maybe plastics used in food production and storage could be replaced with biodegradable non-plastic substitutes such as those made with starch. They have existed for decades but they are more expensive and they have some issues. But if governments wanted to really change things then they could either subsidise the cost of these alternate biodegradable plastics until momentum and competition brings down the price via the market or tax plastic use and even the field that way. The latter of course, like VAT, impacts the poorest in society more than the wealthy so subsidy is, in my opinion, better. And if the technology is not yet good enough for use in food production then government could always pump money into supporting the nascent industry and reaping some reward when it comes to fruition.

Sometimes I hear people saying that we should not be using plastic at all but instead have food in its natural state and then select it ourselves and use paper bags to get to the checkout. Also, there are good ideas around refill stations for things such as peanuts, cornflakes or washing liquids. These are all great ideas but they are a little niche.They make a small difference but not a huge difference. And they have hidden costs as well. Cornflakes bagged in a plastic, sometimes with gases that preserve inside the pack, last longer. So a consequence of refills from giant hoppers could be lifetime and food wastage as the food will not keep as long. And again, this kind of solution better suits the 'time rich' as it adds minutes to each item shopped and the people that tend to be time rich are.... well, it's not the poorest in society. Somewhat counterintuitively such things will cost more as well as they will a) likely have a shorter shelf life but also there is likely to be a greater deal of input from human beings to prepare the goods for sale and for selling.

Don't get me wrong, I like the ideas but finding solutions that move us forward is what we need so I'd put my money on biodegradable packing any day. In fact, I did, I invested in a company that very nearly made it into the mainstream supermarket system but the supermarkets did not have the patience to wait for the issues to be resolved and the company went bankrupt. I lost money but it was worth the punt. Today, there are dozens of other companies running with the same technological approaches but still the supermarkets don't want to pay the premium if their customers will not also pay. And time and again, the consumer votes with their collective feet and does not pay the extra for sustainability. So, once again, it requires a government that really supports the idea.

How about the move towards eradicating the combustion engine and replacing it with fully electric vehicles. And in such impressive time frames as well. I love the idea. I do like electric vehicles. One thing I like is they are amazingly fast, in fact, they are frighteningly fast. Take the Tesla S Plaid. 0-60mph in 2 seconds! Motorcycles don't do that! I have a fairly sporty car, it has a frightening 0-60 of 4.4 seconds but a Tesla S burns past me! Apart from that, I like the silence of the engine, but that's just me getting old. But that's the good stuff out the way, now for the issues. First, where are all the materials for the batteries going to come from ti fulfill the demand? They are all going to have to be extracted from the earth and then processed. That's not so environmentally friendly. 

Where are all the charging stations? How much longer will things take if you have to wait a few hours every 200 miles? But even more importantly, what about the infrastructure? There is not a power grid system in the world that will be able to cope with the change, so the infrastructure will have to change. Just think of the no longer rare occurence of under pavement fires and explosions caused by electrical capacity failures. Start charging vast numbers of vehicles on the current infrastructure will not work, so it will have to be upgraded, and the public will be paying for that, bet you didn't spot that in the small print. And then the biggest kick in the teeth is how the electricity is produced. Removing the combustion engine pollutants from the street is great but burning more fossil fuels to create the electricity that replaces them is kind of missing the point. At the moment 40%+ of UK energy is from gas/oil/coal so a huge increase in electricity demand will require a huge increase in power production preferably from wind/solar/bio/wave/nuclear which will require government subsidy I think. One more thing to consider, tyres produce c.1000 times more pollution than vehicle emissions and electric cars won't alter that little statistic, not until cars work on maglev technology anyway.

There is not one thing that I could do that would have an impact on the direction the planet is heading in my lifetime. I have no children so I have no sense of wanting to make things better for their futures. I'm not sure it is for me to want a good future for other peoples children, that's up to them, anyway, again, it would not make any difference.

Anyway, the question of saving the planet is somewhat moot anyway. The planet was created some billions of years ago, four and half  if I remember correctly, and, one day, it will certainly cease to exist. Life on the planet will be extinguished one day as it came into being. Whether that is because the sun simply burns out (with all the long drawn out processes that precede it simply being a dead lightless star several of which will extinguish life on this planet before the final curtain!) or some other event, time will tell, although it will not tell me or anybody who accidentally stumbles upon this rant. But heh, that's billions more years away, however, it is inevitable, one day, but not a day that we need to be concerning ourselves with right now.

And if that is the case, that we don't need to worry about the end of the planet because of its inevitability but because it is so far into the future that it really does not matter. Then, what termination point does matter?

Unless we all stopped doing 90% of the things that we all do every day (with or without a pandemic) then there will be no way of stopping the next couple of decades of global warming. It's like the proverbial, and hugely ironic, oil tanker, if you want to turn it around, you need time, space and planning.

Thing is, it's not so much about saving the planet anyway. The planet will take care of itself, with or without our help. Indeed the planet will do what it damn well pleases regardless of anything living on its surface. It has been through some interesting times. 

There used to be no oxygen on the planet, or plants, or living things of any description. Life came into being through chemical reactions and then, over four billion years, evolved from the very first cell, cooked up in the minerals around white and/or black smokers, into what we are today. In another four billion years, we won't be here. We will either have evolved into something completely different or we will have regressed. Or indeed all life will have become extinct and returned to base minerals.

Here's a whacky thought. Could you imagine there not be sufficient oxygen to support life on the planet? Is it possible? It has to be possible but probably unlikely. But you could take a number of factors and start to increase the odds a little. You could add the deliberate destruction of green spaces whether the Amazon or Chile wetlands or Argentinian grasslands and add in the increase of desertification as the world heats up and then add in the bacterial infections that are developing rapidly that infect and kill vast numbers of plants and then add in the loss of insects that pollinate either through viral and bacterial disease or pesticides. And then, when you stop adding all these things up and extrapolate the impact of these things into the future then you might, just might, conclude there is a possibility that one day there might be insufficient oxygen on the planet to sustain life. Or at least life as far we know it. I suspect by that point we will all be walking around with personal oxygen systems like divers but on land. But that will not help all the other oxygen using life on earth. I'm sure that it would never come to pass, but heh, who knows.

So when asked the question or variants thereof about caring for the planet. I am quite fond of it being the place I live on but that's about it! All of the things that I enjoy and/or take for granted have come at the expense of utilising resources on the planet and nobody can really stop that. And even if they did stop it, it would not make any huge difference to the planet, it will continue upon its course and it will evolve, one way or another, with or without the assistance of human beings or any other animals on the surface.

Even those that suggest a return to a more basic way of life still need to use resources on the planet to stay alive. They might call it sustainable living, in harmony with the surroundings but that does not make it better. We could all go back to pre-industrial times and then we could all live with the same quality of life that existed back then. Back to the days when the rich had to hire a pineapple to dress a table to show their wealth at a dinner party!

But I am not a complete moron, despite appearances. I do care about my living environment and I do recycle (for what little good it does and for what little point giving how little of what I try to recycle actually ever gets recycled!) I do not want the sea full of toxic plastics that kill sea life and poisons the whole food chain. Mainly because I want other creatures on the planet to be permitted to live without us needlessly killing them. Also, it is not aesthetically pleasing to my eye to see plastic crap lapping gently against the shoreline.

If the planet heats up because of what we have done in the past and continue doing in the future then the planet will manage just fine. The environment will change and we will die out because we are unable to survive in the higher temperatures or because the water rises and makes the available living space much smaller or because the crops that grow well now cannot grow well in the new environment and so stop. But the planet will still continue and it will host new life forms just as it has in the past.

With higher temperatures, different plant life, no ice caps and thus raised sea levels and stormy chaotic weather, who knows what life might come about. without human beings on the planet, it is entirely possible that dinosaurs could re-evolve, in a billion years or so! After all, that's how the planet was just a couple of hundred million years ago.

Anyway, that leads me on to another subject, albeit related.

I don't think anybody over the age of sixty should be allowed to vote or be in governmental power. Forget all the wisdom crap. The future is something that younger people have more of than older people, whatever wishful thinking there might be. So, if they have more future, they should have more say.

The older, wiser, generations should sit back an chill out unencumbered with having to stress about running countries or councils or even picking people to lead them. The older generations had their opportunities, did what they did, lived how they lived and got to a fair old age. Now, the younger generations should take over and the older generations should just accept what the young decide.

Which all seems about as likely as Putin agreeing that the people of Belarus should be permitted a free and fair vote and the result accepted by all, just like at home (Putin's home, not mine)!