This is what acclaimed US astrophysicist and author
Neil De Grasse Tyson said on MSNBC in response to questions about the record
breaking weather events around the globe and the global environmental crisis we
are happily ignoring. Obviously we’d be better off listening to shaved potato Scott Pruitt or a piece of floating lint – such is our current disregard for
the expert, the intelligent, the experienced, highly educated commentator.
Instead we elect moronic celebrities and elevate
charlatans and self-serving sociopaths to the highest offices. Certainly that
is the case in the US and the UK (see last week’s post). Our own head of environmental
matters – gargoyle Gove sneered and denigrated ‘experts’ during the EU
referendum as if one way to rid the world of its problems would be to round up
all the clever, articulate, concerned men and women who know their subject,
and get rid of the lot. Oh – yeah – I forgot – they actually did do that with
the US Environmental Protection Agency. Silly me.
It is difficult for some of us to comprehend that the
ecological destruction and planetary damage which could wipe out humanity is
not the top of every agenda. You cannot escape the obvious however, that people
in general are behaving like we have already colonised other worlds and are
just sorting out the travel arrangements – like students about to move to new
digs who cannot be bothered to flush the loo, clean their beer off the carpet,
wash up or remove the strange blueish orange fur from the back of the fridge.
When are people going to stop confusing tame Hollywood pop-corn accompaniments
with reality?
There was a small success for common sense here last
week when the Scottish Parliament finally decided to ban Fracking. In the ‘home
of the brave’ – a country that will have far more impact on the environment
than the wee ‘home of Braveheart’ the ex-governor of Oklahoma, a climate change
denier and mad keen fracker Scott Pruitt was put in charge of the US
Environmental Protection Agency. This is a man soaked in oil money as deeply as
Macbeth was seeped in blood (see blog 220 Trump
v Mexico and why the US is literally breaking). He is – right now – in the
process of cancelling President Obama’s clean air act. Because – who needs
clean air?
Whether on a global, national or local level the
behaviour of humans to their immediate or wider environment is tantamount to
setting fire to the bed you are lying in. In my own locale the tree-phobic morons and
concrete cretins are out in force – chopping down mature trees or paving over
previously grassed areas (see blog 236 Does
Edinburgh need a tree museum) Last Saturday morning played out to the drone
of a large buzz saw as more gaps appeared in the decades-old arboreal curtain that screens the gardens that back on to each other in my area. Yes – in Scotland folk
cut mature trees from their gardens to ‘improve’ their surroundings and let in
the light. That would be the light that shines between 12 noon and 3pm the
third Wednesday in June…
It is time – as I’ve said before – to speak to these
people on their own terms. Don’t talk about destroying the planet – or their children’s environment – they clearly don’t care. Talk to them about – for example – the
value of their homes. Stupid people value money above all other things (Donald
Trump) The daftest, TV addled idiot could understand that – in the not too
distant future – even on the basis of scarcity – being able to sell a
house with a ‘mature tree’ in the garden – a real live one – will be an added
value – a rarity – a bloody sensation.
At the risk of boring my lovely readers I’ll repeat
and repeat – can we start pointing out to those who don’t give a shit because
they don’t think it will affect them – the planet will be here long after we’re
gone (see my dystopian novella Zero One
Zero Two). We are not destroying it for good simply long enough to make it
uninhabitable for humans. For us. Once we’re gone it will recover. Thing is –
the day of reckoning is getting exponentially closer.
As Neil De Grasse Tyson also said, “Nature is giving
us a shot across the bows”. We need to take notice.
The recent decision of the Scottish Parliament is
heartening. On a personal level because I performed part of my environmental
epic story poem Casey & the Surfmen
in the Scottish Parliament for environment week earlier this year but also
because it seems someone is listening. Someone is taking note, and someone is
taking action in a world where the lunatics have overrun the asylum. It is a
tiny action and it will not help tackle the plasticisation of our oceans, the
warming that is ensuring record breaking hurricanes, the air pollution which is
damaging our children’s physical and mental development right now - today. It
will not stop the catastrophic and cumulative species extinctions, it will not
re-grow the forests we need to breathe, but it is a step and it is a good one.
Let’s take many, many more steps and strides, quicker
and faster and bigger and better, before it’s too late.
*
Both Casey
& the Surfmen and Zero One, Zero
Two can be found on my author page
https://www.amazon.com/Amanda-Baker/e/B0181KEN9E