Unnaturally extreme Natural devastation in the Philippines
has, quite rightly, led to the usual outpouring of sympathy. It will be
short-term as it always is. Media focus will move onto more important things
soon enough – a celebrity with a new shade of nail varnish. But the
immediate givingness is impressive
and speaks well of human instinct. What seems almost impossible to achieve is
the giving up. Giving up the endless shopping for crap, the one-person car journeys, the unnecessary short car trips, the overheated house (though that
one may be coming to an end – see last week’s blog), the wasting of food, the
chucking of chemicals down the sink and toilet, the pollution of the atmosphere
by industry feeding our need for cheap products and so on ad
infinitum.
The hurricane that decimated much of the Philippine archipelagos
was the fastest EVER to make landfall. The usual split between rich survivors
and poor victims was not as marked because even the properties of the wealthier
inhabitants did not totally withstand the onslaught.
News groups were on the ground almost as fast as the tornado,
asking the bereaved and injured ‘how do you feel’ (for heaven’s sake) and
launching in with the criticism of aid agencies and governments. The fact is
there is no way you can legislate against a hurricane and there is no
preparedness for destruction on this scale. My local council can’t keep dog
shit off the pavements (or cars) lord knows how they would cope if my house
were obliterated by a typhoon. News reports have followed like lightening with
disapproval of government corruption and mismanagement, which of course in this
civilised democracy we’d know nothing about (unless of course you are thinking
of the police / politicians / journalists / banks / planning authorities...).
It is our fault. We are ruining the planet, and
not just in ways that result in dramatic headline-grabbing destruction. In many
ways that are ongoing and possibly irreversible.
This week ecologists tried to make a headline out of the
increasing acidity of the world’s oceans. Crustaceans are unable to form
shells, fish are malformed and unable to breed, coral reefs dissolving. Never
mind what is going on above sea level – if the oceans are knackered – we are
all doomed. The ice caps, vital for global environmental stability are being melting
and the forests, vital for the air we breathe,
are being hacked away year by year.
I propose
that climate change deniers should inhabit the same category as holocaust
deniers. Hitler carried out mass slaughter in Europe. Climate change is
fundamentally the fault of developed nations and unfairly impacts on poor ones
and is killing the entire planet prematurely.
While we are being distracted by rich babies and their dim
parents and celebrity break ups and who said what to whom in the media, the
planet is groaning. Mother Nature is crippled and screaming for help but going
unheard, like the victims of Bhopal (there will be a blog on that).
One thing I did not expand on in last week’s rant about the
energy companies was the smoke screen debate about the green levy. AS we know the big
6 energy companies tried to blame the governments’ green levy for their price
hikes. The lily-livered government seems to be kowtowing to the tantrum thrown
by the energy companies’ share holders, and is going to backslide on even this
pathetic fig leaf of a policy.
Meanwhile, before typhoid has even set in, the BBC is
debating the question of aid to disaster-struck and poor countries when ‘we’
are suffering austerity. Well some of us are (see blogs 16, 18, 24, 35, 49).
Frankly when I heard that The Moral Maze (let no catastrophe go to waste with the national 6th form debating society) was to question
whether disaster prone foreigners should get our tax money I thought they must
be referring to HRH Phil the Greek. Sadly, no.
This won’t go away. And you know what? Being less manic in
our consumption wouldn’t only benefit poor countries it would do wonders for
the physical and mental health of people in the West; improving our waste lines
would improve our waist lines as the saying goes.
Thanks for all the funky comments about the cartoons. There
are two to accompany this week’s blog post – got o ‘view my profile’ Thanks.