The clock is ticking.....

Another day, another dire warning about the future of our planet and everything on it.  The latest is again UN sponsored and this time is to do with the effect we humans are having on the biosphere - the natural world.  In a nutshell, it states that 1,000,000 species are threatened with extinction sooner rather than later - plants, birds, animals, insects, marine life: you name it, it's affected.  And it is all down to human driven factors like pollution, deforestation, over-building (i.e. agricultural land swallowed up by housing, roads, industrial complexes and so on) - and of course everyone's favourite bogey man Global Warming/Climate Change. (I know most people would have them as two different things, but they are not: the effects of CO2 emissions and other atmospheric pollutants are causing real changes to our weather patterns, leading to rising temperatures and hence changes to global weather patterns which in turn are changing our planet's climate, whether hotter or colder depending on whereabouts you are.)

I won't go into details because the report is of course available on line but the headlines are well presented on the BBC News website here:

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-48169783 

There will inevitably be naysayers: for instance that Orange Oaf currently occupying the White House in Washington, who has stated categorically that it's "all a hoax, folks, part of a Chinese plot to destabilise and damage the American economy".   The fact sufficient people believed that tosh and a long list of other lies and Fake News (his phrase) to win him the Presidency says more about America and Americans than it does about him (and that is saying a lot).

The British government hasn't commented yet (or at least I haven't seen anything as I write) but will no doubt trumpet its recent pledge to cut all carbon emissions in the UK to zero by 2050.  Pardon my scepticism, but given the Prime Minister cannot get her own Cabinet to agree her agenda (I'm talking about you, Brexit) how is she intending to get the entire country, every man, woman and child, to make significant lifestyle changes to help achieve that target (for it will need precisely that kind of commitment, as well as massive Government and private sector investment to even get close)?  A simple example: suggesting we should all convert to electric cars next time we trade in is all very well, and there are some excellent vehicles out there nowadays with battery life (and hence travel ranges) improving all the time, but where is the infrastructure to support this?  In The Netherlands, where I worked for a couple of years ending three years ago, every office block, every city street and parking area in Amsterdam, was equipped with several charging points, enabling you to give your battery a boost while you were at work, or shopping, or whatever.  In the UK, in London, in  the south-east, in East Anglia, over the course of several trips back and journeys around in those years, I have not seen a single charge point.  Not one.  Anywhere.  The infrastructure simply does not exist.

 Recent studies and David Attenborough's BBC Climate Change special a month or so back make it clear that unless all of us, every government, every industry, every individual starts making such huge changes to the way we live, the way we travel, even the way we eat, and seriously tackle this issue of climate change - and by extension step up conservation efforts to put a brake on deforestation, fracking and other biosphere wrecking activities - we will be faced with permanent irreversible climate change in 11 years.  That's ELEVEN YEARS.  My daughter will be 22, my son 24.  My grandkids just 13.   That is a truly horrific prospect - and yet still there are no visible indicators (beyond the Tory party's fatuous pledge - 11 years takes us to 2030, so the government target is already 20 years too late!) that anyone is doing anything serious to even get us all to change our ways.

Vested interests get in the way every time.  No government, whether democratic or autocratic, seems willing to force or coerce its people to make the investment in time and money needed.  Groups like Extinction Rebellion, the Green Party and others are doing their best to keep the topic at the top of the news agenda, and more importantly the political agenda, but there is only so much they can do.  It is up to us as individuals to take up the gauntlet and run with it.  There is plenty pf material in the public domain that we can use to self-educate ourselves and change the way we live, the way we travel and so on, without government's insistence.

When I was kid I used to read a lot science-fiction (I still do actually), and a popular idea was that at some point there would be a World Government.  Individual countries would still exist and take care of their own particular needs, but for what we now term big ticket items, such as taxation, health care, environmental protection and security, then the World Government would call the shots, make all the laws and directives, and everyone else would have to fall into line.  Often that World Government would either be, or derive from, the United Nations.  Today's UN tries to do some of that, through agencies like UNESCO, the UN Security Council, and other related agencies like the WHO.  The problem is there is no enforcement process - no matter how many Resolutions are passed by the UN they are frequently ignored (case in point: there have been many Resolutions relating to Israel's treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank that are simply ignored by Israel and its allies like - er - the USA, and the UN can apparently do absolutely nothing about it).  So as idyllic as a World Government might be, and no matter how helpful it might be in addressing these very real environmental issues the UN warns of, I think we missed our chance to do something about 50 or 60 years ago.  That boat has left the harbour.

When I retired recently, I figured I would do fewer trips, but ones I wanted to do rather than ones I had to do for work (and write about them here of course).  I fancied seeing some Wonders of the World - so far only Niagara Falls 40 odd years ago is ticked off (they were magnificent with Canada's Horseshoe Falls far more impressive than the American Falls across the gorge), I've flown over Greenland a few times on trans-Atlantic flights (and noticed the retreating ice cap), and spent an interesting few days exploring the (small) jungles and mangrove swamps in Trinidad.  I'd love to visit Ayer's Rock in Australia, Yellowstone Park in the States, take the train alongside the Rockies between Seattle and Vancouver (allegedly one of the most scenic railway lines in the world).  A safari in Africa would be fun, as would visiting places like Iceland, Norway (epic scenery in both), driving the west coast road to Inverness in Scotland and trailing through the Białołenka Forest in Eastern Poland on the trail of the only wild buffalo herd in Europe.  Don't expect to do any of it now, unless I come up on the Euro-Millions lottery.

Having spent 20 years doing probably 2 flights a week on average, I must have had a fairly dodgy carbon footprint (even if for part of that time at least my employer was making carbon offsets to mitigate (I have no real idea how that works, but still.....) so reducing my travels should make a difference.  Crunching numbers since then suggests I will be doing even less trips than I want......even my trips back to England will be reduced.  Shame, but there you go.  I walk and cycle a lot, for fitness primarily, but that too is doing a tiny bit to help.  I try to re-cycle where I can - difficult because right now Poland is not too big on that - and we use energy efficient bulbs and appliances at home as much as possible.  I'm just one person......negligible effects.  But there are 8billion of us.....if we all did a few little things like that it will all add up.  Eventually.

Whether it will be enough, only time will tell.  And beyond any doubt, the clock is ticking.