Dear Ros and Cllr Chris - and everyone else who is interested
Every cloud has a silver lining; and, if you snooze you lose
You wrote, Ros, "When the time is right, we will look to resume our engagement with decision makers on the climate crisis and how we build a fairer, healthier and sustainable future for all."
I do think this is understandable. However, I am so concerned at our society being up the creek without a paddle ("to be in a serious quandary with little chance of a positive outcome"). Does our present predicament foreshadow when fossil fuels will be scarce and the climate emergency even more blindingly obvious? Then, things will be ten times worse, won't they? Therefore, we must work immediately towards that lower impact, fairer and more sustainable society where the rich help the poor, the strong help the weak and the advantaged help the disadvantaged. And, where the old like me, give way, give preference to the young to enable them to thrive as we elders fade away and are gone. We must continue to explain the uncomfortable realities of life and death, I think. That does mean urgent engagement with everyone and especially decision makers. And we are all decision makers, too of course. We can each lead by example.
It seems, the virus crisis is making a small difference to the climate crisis and the reality of resource depletion, especially finite fossil fuels. Highly dangerous greenhouse gases have dropped as air flights and movement by fossil fuels have lessened. We are becoming more dependent on contact by phone and computer and on walking and cycling and, certainly no unnecessary travel now by public transport or, when it is all over, in cars. Physical distancing still enables us to talk and to socialise at two metres when in the open air.
When the virus has eventually died out, we will all want to get back to how things were. However, we must NOT, entirely. I think that we must still restrain our use of fossil fuels and to minimise our dependency on them. This is because we are fossil fuel junkies that is leading to climate catastrophe, Attenborough's "collapse of civilisations" and "extinction of much of the natural world" and "time is running out" warnings. And he said that at COP 24 in December 2018, if I remember correctly.
Now is the time to live and campaign so that we permanently change our lifestyles to respond to the much greater climate emergency, the uncomfortable realities of resource depletion and unsustainable living and dying.
That wonderful Stourbridge Quaker and Green Party member, Joyce Millington, in the 1980s and 90s, was urging rationing of finite fossil fuels. I think this is as urgent as ever when the virus has died out. But our fast changing climates most definitely have not and are alive and well and changing for the worse, we are told. I think we must have less social connectivity by hungry fossil fuels and more connectivity with nature and the uncomfortable realities of life. Hence, these ideas:
But what do the rest of you think? If we wake up, we may win!
Tim Weller
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