Random Rants

From @r4today:

‘ “It is a matter of regret” that taxpayers and not private banks have carried the burden of the economic crisis – George Osborne’

Really. A matter of regret. Is that the best that he can do? A matter of regret that those who basically caused this crisis – the government and the banks, acting in partnership – are not carrying the can. Guess what, George: you’re the chancellor. You can do something about this. Or would that spoil the conservative party’s favourite game of punishing people for daring to be poor?

From The Independent:

Carbon emissions set to be highest in history

Essentially, despite a fall in emissions in the Western hemisphere (due to the economic crisis), emissions in countries such as China and India have increased, leading to a global net increase in CO2 emissions. This is Bad News, to put it mildly.

From the article:

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned in successive scientific reports that a “business as usual” approach to global CO2 emissions is highly likely to lead to average temperature rises of up to 6C by 2100, leading to potentially catastrophic climate change.

“We are definitely on the high end of the [IPCC] projections and it’s also grim to see that as the growth increases in the emerging economies … the rich countries have to really start decreasing their internal emissions, but that is really not happening, at least at the scale that is needed to limit global warming to the minimum of 2C that the government has pledged,” Professor Le Quéré said.

People, pay attention. We’re at the upper end of IPCC predictions. This is seriously fucking bad news. When the article says ‘potentially catastrophic climate change’, it means any or all of the following things: massive rises in sea levels, millions of people dead as whole swathes of the world become unlivable, previously tropical diseases going global, a collapse in food production, and guess what: if you think the changes in our lifestyles needed to prevent this are huge, they ain’t got nothing on the changes in lifestyle that will occur if we sit around and do fuck all.

Which is why, for me, doing fuck all is not an option.

Rediscovering politics

I was brought up in and around politics – my parents were both party activists, and so from a young age I would spend the weeks leading up to an election out delivering leaflets, helping dad put posters up and generally sharing in the excitement. On election day, our house was the local hq, and so the highlight of the day was mum sending me and my sister off down the chip shop for our tea.

At age seven, we were given some free painting time in school. It must have been the end of April, because I chose to paint a ‘Vote Labour’ poster, complete with a red rose. It was proudly displayed in our front window for several years.

In 1992, the general election was on a knife-edge, and I remember making a huge fuss about not being allowed to stay up and watch the results come in. I woke up at probably about 5.30am the following morning, and raced downstairs, turned on the tv. Then went and sat outside my parent’s bedroom and cried. I didn’t understand how we could have done so much, and still lost.

By the time I reached 18 and university beckoned, I’d had enough of politics. As far as I could see, party politics was full of bitchy  backbiting, and the Labour government were already failing to live up to all the high hopes of May 1997. While at university, I had really nothing to do with politics, choosing not to get involved. I kept my ear to the ground, and was generally well-informed, but couldn’t see that I had anything to offer, or that student politics had anything to offer me. The experience of the Stop the War protest only confirmed this view. This time my response was not tears, but anger. How could the government blithely ignore so many millions – the largest peacetime demonstration in the UK? But they did, and I could see no reason to involve myself in a politics that behaved like this.

It’s now been 4 years since I finished university, and at 26 years of age, politics is finally starting to excite me again. I’ve become involved in Climate Rush, and through this wonderful group of women I’ve found my voice, and my passion, once again.

I’m not angry now, not in the same way. I’m passionate, and hopeful, and driven by the imperative to act. Scientists currently think we have somewhere between 5 and 10 years to prevent catastrophic, irreversible climate change that will devastate life on earth. For me, doing nothing is impossible.

I’m still working out exactly what I think, what my own personal driving factors and aims are, but on a general scale, I wholeheartedly believe that the way we live now is completely unsustainable, in a way that goes beyond our effect on the world’s climate. We cannot keep growing for ever, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that unless we scale back our consumption – in every which way – we will wipe ourselves off the face of the earth.

This is clearly a terrifying prospect, but I don’t believe that it means a return to the dark ages. Imagine a world where we work less, but get time to sit and eat with our families. Where we have less money, but we spend on things that last, and that genuinely improve our lives, rather than distract us from them. Where we live as part of nature, not as its masters. Where we are not driven by an endless and unsatisfying quest for more, more, more.

I also believe that our choices matter. Every choice that we make has a global impact. It would take something in the region of 3 earths to have sufficient resources to enable everyone on earth to live the way that we in the West do today. Clearly we do not have 3 earths, so either we have to scale back our use of the earth and share its resources more equitably, or we explicitly condemn others to lives of grinding poverty so we can live lives of excess.

I know what my choice is.