Tag: environment

"Home thoughts from semi-isolation"

Although I am spending most of my time at home, apart from walking the dog, I popped into my local Tesco store today for a loaf of bread. They had three. Many of the other shelves were empty.

In front of the tills were tape-marked standing areas, around three feet from the front of the serving area. The staff were wearing gloves and continually asked customers wishing to pay with cash to use the self-service checkouts (with a subtext of “at your own risk”).

Contactless payment was welcomed, and the suppliers thereof are some of the few beneficiaries of the current global pandemic situation.

Tesco have clearly thought through the problem and worked out sensible ways to keep the local stores open, if inadequately supplied.

I still keep thinking that I am working my way through episode one of the 1970s BBC Drama series “Survivors” in slow motion.

Whatever else comes from this pandemic, I believe that the end result will be that many people will be forced to re-evaluate the worldwide interdependency that has evolved in the last half-century.

Already carbon emissions have been dramatically reduced (Just like after the Icelandic volcano problem in NW Europe) as travel is restricted, or is simply no longer fashionable. Maybe this will do more for the environmentalists than any number of protest marches.

With the worldwide continuing closure of national borders I foresee a greater level of parochialism, isolationism, nationalism and a reversion to “homegrown” production. This may turn out to be a positive or a negative. Time will tell.

On the positive side: I have only heard the word “Brexit” once on TV in the past fortnight. And people you meet on the street (particularly fellow dog-walkers) are more happy to chat – at a sensible distance.

Our planet, and how we could lose it.

Global scientists have once again released a report stating that we are destroying the planet.
In fact we are merely rendering it uninhabitable for our species. The planet will simply shrug us off as a temporary parasite.

But, one wonders, what is the point?
On a personal level, nobody to my knowledge has yet come up with an affordable electric car that can reasonably tow a caravan or a horse trailer over any reasonable distance.
Even if they did, what is the comparative climate effect and cost of generating and delivering the electricity, and providing the charging points nationwide?

On a global level, until the USA acknowledges the problem and Russia, China and India, along with a host of smaller  countries, achieve their ambition of catching up with “the West’s” power consumption levels, we are unlikely to make any local effect.

Maybe, having screwed the planet beyond our current abilities, we must either evolve to cope or die out as a species. We won’t be the first to be replaced, even on this planet.

I realise that we are merely the tenants of our environment, and custodians for future generations.  So the best we can hope to do is to limit the impact of the previous 2000 or so generations who had no idea what they were doing.