to Jonathon Porritt re economic growth

Dear Jonathon

Would you like to write a post, please in reply to what I have just heard on Radio 4's 'Today'?  We had Luke Johnson, Vince Cable and one other, chaired by Amol Rajan at about 8.35 am to about 8.50 am.

Decades ago, you said that all governments' great golden target of 3% economic growth every single year for 25 years would result in production and consumption being doubled - clearly unsustainable and ruinous in a finite world that is not growing in line with our ever greedy demands upon it.  My "living unnaturally in a natural world and living infinitely in a finite world - pretty foolish."

Please listen to the discussion and write your comments, corrections, wisdom on your blog - PLEASE.  I need your political and ecological education!

All the best and thanks if you have time to oblige.

Tim

To Brian Angell

Dear Brian - and copied to the Chronicle editors.

Thanks for your email.

My wife, Linda is the younger sister of Chrissie Verduyn, who passes on her copy of the excellent, the very professionally produced, month after month, 'Clun Chronicle'.  We live in Halesowen on the edge of the Black Country and next to our NW Worcestershire green belt.

Chrissie presented the Clun Climate Action Plan from the CCEG in June and your good self, on behalf of the Town Council, endorsed it and gave every encouragement for progress to be made in three areas that Alison Weeks wrote about in the July issue.

My concern is that human-induced climate change is still not making a difference in every area of our lives.  Climate science is now 160 years old but we still carry on regardless with business as usual, of economic growth at the expense of the planet's fast changing life support systems.

The NFU produced their brochure about net zero CO2 emissions that I picked up at the Minsterley Show.  It was produced two years ago.  I read that 10% of our nation's greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture.  Now, the first-rate, Adam Henson on BBC's 'Country File' is getting down to making further changes on his farm in Gloucestershire.  

Matt Jones, in the July Chronicle, wrote that his Acton Farming Company goes in for a four-year rotation of crops, minimum tillage and, practices that reduce "the reliance on man-made and mined fertilisers - often produced halfway around the world".  That is excellent as, it seems, is everything else he is doing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and impacts.  Your farmers are probably way ahead of Adam Henson!

As for me, I'm more in favour of Matt's arable farming because I think we need to eat much less meat and more plants for a more sustainable lifestyle that would give lower impacts from our fossil fuels/greenhouse gases intensive lives.

Now we have heard from Matt, can our livestock farmers boast of their farming practices that are "treading more lightly on the planet" (Jonathon Porritt)?

With best wishes

Tim

PORRITT HAS IT RIGHT

Sir Jonathon Porritt wrote last week:

"There are no get out of jail free cards. We’re trapped in an energy-intensive way of life, driven by frenetic consumerism, causing massive damage to both people and the planet, and putting at risk the very future of humankind. There is no energy-based solution to this meta-impasse: the only way we’ll avoid an accelerating slide into civilisational collapse is by transforming that suicidal way of life."

Response to Jonathon Porritt's blog

Thanks very much for this helpful overview, Jonathon.

You talk about "legacy fossil fuels" where I write about finite fossil fuels.  What do you mean by 'legacy' and why that preference?

You speak in glowing terms of what Biden is doing in the US but what is your verdict on the UK?  We have very big spending on HS2, HS2's little sister in the West Midlands called Metro "bus on rails" trams and, Sprint?  All costing billions of pounds in deadly greenhouse gas emissions.
 
Sprint gives a 1st class bus service while still having to run a 2nd class bus service for those bus stops that the Sprint does not stop at.  Why not make both a unified 1st class bus service?

 
What is the point of HS2, Metro and Sprint?  Why not simply end the discrimination against the young and middle-aged and give them what my age group has had for nearly all of this century - regional Fare-Free Public Transport?

Pointless HS2, Metro and Sprint in unnecessarily using finite resources, adding to the heating greenhouse and continuing with nature turned into concrete, brick and tarmac.  Just stick with trains and buses only, to make for fewer changes between different modes and a faster public transport journey.

OBVIOUS - 'SACRIFICE TO SURVIVE' - ACTIONS NEEDED NOW!

 It is urgent that we each must feel guilty about using finite fossil fuels and CUT BACK NOW AND FOREVER!

1. Therefore, and such is the intensity and growth of the Brexit/Covid/Climate/Ecological crises, we must quickly cancel (and pay the cancellation fees) for HS2, Metro extensions and Sprint diesel buses and bring in an immediate national 60 mph speed limit on every dual carriageway and motorway.
2. Use the money to immediately extend fare-free public transport to all age groups for urban travel but not intercity travel, to cut our ecocidal emissions.  This action also works as compensation for the higher risk of Covid transmission.
3. Bring in an immediate household carbon allowance based on council tax banding to cut fossil fuel use.
4. Cutting deadly greenhouse gases means less damaging economic activity.  Therefore, the wealthy like me must financially help all the very many that will suffer from loss of jobs.  So do what must be done to ensure that no-one suffers financially.  And get the solution jobs moving, immediately.
5. Do what Sir Jonathon Porritt advises in his new book, 'Hope in Hell: a decade to confront the climate emergency'.
6. Do what Sir David Attenborough and Greta Thunberg advise.
7. Watch 'Extinction: the facts' at BBC 1 on Sun eve, 13 Sept at 8 pm - tomorrow!

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Tim Weller