Environmentally Responsible, not Green

I love dolphins, birds and rainforests as much as the next person and used to regard myself as Green, an environmentalist. In fact I wrote the first environmental policy for the Oxford college where I worked in the early noughties.

However now I find that being 'Green' seems to entail ditching all my old school tech and investing in a load of smart technology with built-in obsolescence and believing in scary sounding concepts like 'global compliance' and 'depopulation', I am having to revise my position and thus Green identity.

My idea of being environmentally responsible is somewhat different;

• Rescuing heritage buildings and retro-greening them in preference to demolition and erection of glass and concrete blocks with a 50 year life span.
• Walking, cycling or busing most places but occasionally driving a 16-year old car containing no unnecessary electrics or air conditioning but which has outlived its carbon footprint, passess its yearly emissions test, runs on unleaded and is easy to repair.
• Expecting clothes to last at least 5 years.
• Seldom flying
• Recycling
• Remaining child free
• Not wasting food or anything else (if I can help it)
• Being an almost-vegan (aside from the odd bit of cheese)
• Ignoring most fashion and fippery (ok unless it's a REALLY cute piece of jewellery)
• Eschewing so-called 'smart' technology including the Internet of Things, which are all just a waste of electricity and batteries to perform simple tasks I am more than capable of performing myself.
• If I could buy a computer that lasted a decade and a mobile phone ditto, I'd be delighted, but computers tend to have a 5-year lifespan tops, even with upgrading works and you are lucky to get 2 years out of a mobile phone before the manufacturers cease support for it and it becomes increasingly unusable. You cannot even remove the battery from new phones any more.
• Being strongly opposed to scrapping pefectly good cars, utility meters, boilers and street lights in favour of over-engineered, ugly and inflexible new ones, which claim to be green, but will take years to prove it and meanwhile could have detrimental affects on our health.

In a nutshell my own personal environmentalism translates into 'being sensible' and not buying stuff for the sake of it.

'Extinction Rebellion' and Greta Thunberg have to all intents and purposes, been put out of a job by the current CV crisis.
Enter various wealthy public figures, stage left, to opine that the world is 'over-populated' and that de-population measures will need to be adopted.

Whoah! Let's stop right there shall we?
1. Who are these (mostly unelected) public figures to make these decisions and without public consultation or consent?
2. How is there an ethical means of shrinking the world population within the next ten years beyond making free contraception universally available to all and tax breaks and other financial incentives to encourage people to have fewer kids? (and yes, I do want my enormous tax break for having none!).
According to 'Freakonomics' human beings respond best to financial incentives for behavioural changes.

If there is no ethical, consensual and transparent means of bringing this about, how is the architect of de-population any better than Mr H.itler? How is de-population any different to g.enocide?

If you adulterate a human being's food, environment, air, water or medicine to compromise their natural health and life span, this is murder. As for wars, whether military or germ, these are not ethically acceptable population thinners either.

I do not consent to this world and nor should you. You can bet your bottom dollar that the super-rich are not going to be affected by it, same as they are exempted most other human issues.

If you think I am being melodramatic, do your own research.  It doesn't take many clicks to find verifiable evidence on independent news sites. And it's a head frack to say the least.

Only don't forget to speak out and share the knowledge when you do. Bad things happen when good people do nothing. Moreover...

From Cheer to Fear

While my childhood in the 1980s wasn't the happiest, I was aware that around me was an optimistic society.

Our hair was big and our pop music was bouncy (if you didn't count The Smiths). A particular favourite of mine was Mental as Anything's 'Live it Up' (below), which never failed to boost my spirits.



We'd somehow successfully navigated the threat of Nuclear war, oil running out and the closure of the pits and most of us looked forward to the future.

Clothes and pop music were eagerly devoured with the lines to all our favourite songs learned from 'Smash Hits' magazine or 'Jackie'. Pop star pull-outs lined our bedroom walls.

No one cared about looking like a supermodel. In fact we only had models. Supermodels hadn't yet been invented. However we accepted that very few people looked like a model and were happy with 'pretty' and aspired, if anything, to 'girl next door' in terms of looks. That winning combination of wholesomeness and prettiness.

Drugs were virtually unheard of in the Irish town where I grew up. Glue sniffing was about it and many of us bought (or were bought) a single of 'Just Say No!' by the Grange Hill cast. Our teachers still walked around with a cane under their arm (at least in my first year) -  gesture enough to keep the vast majority of us in line at school - as we knew they had the power to use it.

When I did school work experience on my local newspaper and was paired with Don, the 'Courts & Sports' reporter, crime was low level. the odd stolen ladder or charity box. Father Ted genre crimes.

While our homes tended to be decorated in various shades of brown and our parents' cars beige, we ourselves were colourful and any clothing, particularly involving a fluorescent zigzag paired with a RaRa skirt, was a must. We also loved experimenting with make up and hair.

We enjoyed thriving shops, libraries, community centres, pubs, cinemas and nightclubs. Banks, Post Offices and ticket offices were plentiful as were jobs. If we wanted something we generally had to work for it and save for it, but that made the acquiring of it all the sweeter. You had to be about 50 with a mortgage to be trusted by the bank with a credit card. Luckily our cheque books and cash did us just fine.

If we had time to feel blue from our busy social lives, we just felt blue for a while. No one called it 'depression' or 'anxiety'.

You had to sit and wait for the phone not to ring to get your heart broken, not have it mercilessly shattered within seconds of checking on your love interest's internet or mobile phone activity.

No one seemed to worry about their weight or what they had or hadn't been blessed with in the body part lottery. Or at least if they did, they never talked about it. Life was for living, for getting on with.

Fast forward to today and we have a society which seems ever more miserable and fearful, even though it's never known more material goods and comfort and enjoys international travel we could only dream of!

We have allergies that kill us (as oppose to merely being a nuisance) and people with anxiety and depression from a young age.

Yes, we have tackled many of our 'isms', but as societal acceptance has grown, other intolerances seem to have risen up to take their place. In the good old days friends could have a difference of opinion without falling out over it. That level of diversity seems to have evaporated. I believe we have also become less caring about each other and more selfish as a nation. I remember people sticking up for each other and helping each other as communities. I remember respect for the elderly. What happened?  And how could social isolation become the number one social ill in an unprecedented era of electronic connectivity?

Social mobility was also important. Now most wealth is going one way - in an upwards direction - to those who already have far too much of it. This is having a crippling effect on the rest of the economy, akin to a tourniquet cutting off the blood supply to the rest of the body. Debt has been turned into credit -  abracadabra!

Our tramps (who often took to the road by choice) have been replaced by homeless in ever increasing numbers.

Addictions of all varieties are skyrocketing and it is not uncommon to find people in their 20s complaining of a level of ill health they might have expected to encounter in their 60s.

As if we needed any more woes, we are warned there is a 'climate emergency' but are not told what we are supposed to do about it, apart from worry and find ourselves fleeced for ever more taxes, greener cars, greener boilers etc, usually within a few short years of replacing the previous for environmental reasons.

The TV news has almost become a no go area with its carpet-bombing of doom and gloom.

Perhaps that is why we still find so much 80s music playing everywhere we go. It reminds us all of how life should be. Buoyant and optimistic. Looking forward to a bright future!

I for one refuse to live in fear. Let's all make this our mantra.