Environment Monday - Why Thunderbirds won't save us from the Environmental Catastrophe we are facing

Thunderbirds

Back when I was seven or eight, I was watching the news with my Father. The big story was the famine in Biafra. I doubt many people in the UK under 50 will have a clue where Biafra was or why there was a famine. For me, it was the first time I became aware that not everywhere in the world was like Mill Hill and that really bad things happen on a massive scale, which affect millions of people. For me, hunger was something that was a slightly unpleasant feeling in my tummy just before Mummy served dinner. Water came out of a tap and you could drink as much as you like. Home had a comfy bed and a secure front door. As regular church go'ers there was a big appeal to send money to the 'starving children in Africa'. When we didn't eat our school dinners, the nuns would berate us and tell us "there are children dying in Biafra for want of that food you are leaving". If you didn't eat your cabbage, you'd feel very guilty watching the news later, seeing the hopeless faces of the children. It troubled me to see such misery.

At the time, I was a big fan of the TV series Thunderbirds. I loved the concept of a millionaire setting up, for purely altruistic reasons, an organisation that could help people anywhere in the world. Although the specific machines didn't exist, there was no technology on the program that didn't exist at the time. We were sending men to the moon. So I asked my Father a question, as I believed him to be the font of all knowledge. I said "Dad, why doesn't the United Nations set up an organisation like Thunderbirds, with planes and boats and food supplies, so that when something likes this happens, they've got everything ready to help people?" I couldn't actually believe that all the really clever people in the world hadn't thought about this or come up with such a simple solution. After all, we had a massive army, a massive air force and a massive navy and they weren't fighting any wars, so why couldn't they simply take a load of food and temporary buildings to Biafra and fix the problem? After all we'd fed and housed millions of squaddies involved in the D-Day Landings, using long supply chains. My Dad's answer was one I did not understand. It seemed to make no sense at all, but as he seemed very sure of it, I assumed that he was right.  He stated "Most of these disasters are man made and many powerful people are making a lot of money out of them". I asked what he meant. His response was quite disturbing "Things only happen in this world when people can make a lot of money out of them". This made even less sense. For the Biafra appeal, our Parish Priest was thanking people for their generosity and telling us how many poor people we were feeding. So I said to my Father "But surely people are generous, Father Dowley was saying how generous they'd been with the collection". My father's response gave me my first insight into human nature. He said "If you work it out, everyone has probably put less in the collection than they spent in the pub the night before".

I was reminded of this yesterday. Our local Church has a monthly food bank collection. I usually buy ten pounds worth of provisions for this. It makes me feel good, but on the previous Saturday night, I'd bought myself and my wife two rounds of drinks in the rather pleasant Green Room bar in West Hampstead after the Jester Festival closed. Each round (a lager and a red wine) were £11.70 a pop. I don't really know why, but it made me feel rather hypocritical.

I had forgotten about Biafra, I was only a child and it was a long, long time ago. I was reminded only because a friend at the Jesterfest asked if I was going to see The Dead Kennedys (a US punk Band on their forthcoming tour). I was intrigued to find out what their front man Jello Biafra had been up to. I did a quick google of his name and was reminded of the crisis. I was appalled to find that 2 million Biafrans had died. I had vague memories, but was horrified to find that the famine was caused by a civil war. What did interest me was to find that I was not alone in my view that the International Community should respond. The Charity Médecins Sans Frontières  was formed as a direct result of the crisis, to give medical aid to those affected by such crises. So it seems that there are good guys there, who don't only think money.

Biafra was 50 years ago. How many Trillions have been spent on military hardware? How many have died of starvation, how many of those as a direct result of man made decisions? Whilst Biafra was an appalling tragedy on a truly massive scale, the world is facing a global crisis on a scale way beyond anything we've witnessed. Global warming, deforestation and an ever increasing population is making it ever more inevitable that it is only a matter of time before we see starvation and famine on a continental scale. There is time to avert this. In Western countries, the population is in decline. The reason? Because when you have prosperity and wealth, the birth rate drops. As for global CO2 levels, a study has shown that a crash global program of tree planting could massively lower the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, as well as providing valuable wildlife habitats. Technology is developing all manner of ways of generating electricity in a clean manner. As for food, we need to change the way we eat. I have adopted a semi vegan lifestyle. I love eating meat and I do not want to spare myself the pleasure. But what I do is I limit my meat eating, and when I do, I eat free range, high quality food. This was a decision I took more as a result of the lifestyle changes I adopted to help me live with cancer, but now the vast majority of meals we eat at home are vegan. We buy organically grown vegetables. If we go out, I will have a steak or some duck if we are in a Chinese restaurant, but at home, we have a lot of soups, lentils and pulses, salads, rice and pasta dishes. I find that I enjoy the meat more when I have it less often, as it seems far more of a treat. I don't eat cheap supermarket sausages (factory farmed in awful conditions) or watery bacon and ham. If, as a society,  we all did this, maybe eating meat 1-2 days a week, we'd save money, be able to eat better quality food which is tastier and better for us. It would also free up resources to allow the 50% of people who live with a degree of poverty in the world to have a fairer share. Meat and dairy farming creates greenhouse gasses and a reduction in this globally would have a huge impact. We should also try and eat locally grown foods when they are in season. If you buy English strawberrys when they are in season and compare them to the imported ones you buy at Xmas, you will taste a completely different food. Sadly, we have been conned into thinking there is no cost to having the fruit and veg we want all year around. There is. It has to be transported thousands of miles and when it gets here it just doesn't taste as good.

The point I am trying to make is that we, as consumers, have the power to change things. Sadly my Father was right. The United Nations, to me a completely failed and discredited organisation, will not save us from the impending crisis. But we can use our spending power to change things. We can also use our votes to elect parties that pursue green agendas. I believe that if the UK started investing in development of green technologies as a national priority, we'd be at the forefront of the the technology of the future and this would protect and future proof our economy. When you switch on the light in your kitchen, do you care how the electricity is generated? My guess is that you never give it a second thought. You just want the light to come on. The same with the kettle and the oven. A few years ago, I realised that I have a responsibility to the planet. We installed solar panels at both our business and our home. This was an investment that is now paying us back handsomely. Sadly, the government has gotten rid of all of the incentives that make this financially worthwhile. The renewables industry in the UK has gone into a massive slump. This is tragic and irresponsible. There are several things the government could do to help us make the right decisions.

1. Give tax incentives to Supermarkets and shops to stock locally produced, in season food.
2.  Adjust the tax structure to favour meat and dairy farming to encourage humane farming techniques that remove cruelty (ie higher taxes for intensive farming to subsides farms using better practice).
3. Restore the previous tax breaks and subsidies for renewables.
4. Teach schoolchildren about vegan cooking and fresh foods and ensure all schools serve proper nutritious foods.
5. Make supermarkets have to pay consumers to return packaging.
6. Give tax breaks to firms to encourage green travel policies for employees.
7.  Plant more trees and shrubs. In London we desperately need more shrubs that have sticky leaves to be planted by busy roads. These capture particulates and have a major role to play in improving air quality.
8. Use tax incentives to develop technologies for removing pollution from the atmosphere at pollution hotspots (Busy roads, power stations, incinerators etc).
9. Develop biofuels that are carbon neutral.
10. Make walking to school a no 1. priority for school admissions, with penalties for parents of children in urban areas who drive children to school.

I am sure that some of this will not be too popular in some circles. My view is that if you want to pump pollution into the atmosphere, be it by using coal generated electricity or by driving you child miles to the school of your preference, then you should pay for the privilege. I am a big fan of the concept of using the tax system to make us act as better citizens. There is a strong libertarian lobby that thinks that people should be allowed to do as they please. My view is that anti social behaviour should always incur a cost. We all pay the price for the rise in asthma in the UK, caused by pollution, and those of us who create less are subsidising the least responsible members of society. I call that unfair.

Much as I'd love Thunderbirds to rescue us, ultimately it is up to us, collectively as individuals to make the difference. My Father was right, people only do things when they make loads of money out of it. If we changed the way we tax things so the good guys did a bit better and the bad guys did a bit worse, then we'd have real change.