April 3, 2008
Maybe, I’m just out of step with the times but these sorts of stories make me want to scream, “What is so wrong with responsibility or cleaning up after yourself or admitting that your actions affect others, not always for the better and doing something to prevent it happening again?” Am I being too simplistic and naive?
I don’t understand how saying, ” Gee whizz, you know, the global economy is constricting and well, 1% of GDP maybe too much to contribute to the countries and people that will be/are affected badly by climate change. It’s a time of belt tightening”, abnegates the clear responsibility of those countries (and peoples), who are the greatest polluters and have gained the most from this system of economics. What is that? Oops, sorry but we need to maintain the lifestyles of the chosen few. Yes, the economic system is such a house of cards but well, we didn’t realise that those cards, were you know, actual cards. We believed that with technology, they had the strength of bricks!
I do not absent myself from those who could do more. Even as the Riot for Austerity year comes to a close, our household has not achieved its goals. There are quite a few areas, where despite making large reductions, we have not reached the 90% target…water, overall natural gas use, petrol, for example. Sometimes we are lazy and drive when we could walk or buy something that is shiny and new and not essential. However, we still persevere (and will continue to do so) because the choice to be lazy or impulsive is a luxury and the repercussions should not be shied away from. We have a responsibility to keep making these reductions and changes to our ways of thinking, coming up with creative alternatives and solutions. Is it always easy? No but why should it be? Why shouldn’t we have to try harder?
So, what has the picture of the magpie got to do with this? Magpies are stalwarts; they hang around during the winter and tough it out.
April 3, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Grandiflora, my heart sinks when I go in to
a toy store and see all this plastic rubbish
the children are “fed” with and all the other million rubbish people “think” it is a must have. I don’t get it either.
April 7, 2008 at 3:35 am
Realistically speaking it is only a blend of technology and belt-tightening that can get us out of the mess now. Problem is that politicians realise that belt-tightening is not a vote getter, so technology bears the brunt of the responsibility.
Your 90% reduction is astonishing, no matter that you didn’t quite get there. The sad reality is that the general population would probably not have to achieve anything like that to make significant impact on the problem, but we’re mired anyway.
My feeling is that there will have to be a disaster of significant proportions before there is any worthwhile affect on the majority of peoples’ behaviour.
I heard a representative of a Melbourne power company opine that the recent Earth Hour lights-out ‘didn’t have any significant impact on power usage’ for the one hour that people switched off. Thus a probably educated (I say probably, but who knows when pondering such a statement) person completely misses the point.
Ah me. Stupid humans.
April 7, 2008 at 9:38 pm
Belt tightening would get my vote!
April 9, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Trudi: The sad thing about those toys, is that the plastics off-gas ….rubbish indeed.
Anaglyph: I fear imminent threat will be the only thing to galvanise people into action. I kind of think, we are at that stage….perhaps cataclysmic threat is more of what people are after. Me, I’d rather not have the extreme pressure of having a gun to my head constantly!
Lis: Yes to belt tightening but not so that it bails out failed banks and business at the expense of feeding people and the planet.