Mgt Thatcher, as PM in 1988, said ...

It is 1988 and it is the hottest summer on record.  The greenhouse effect is detected and it is changing our climate.  "It is the year that our earth spoke back.  Our land, water and soils support a remarkable range of human activities but they can only take so much." (George HW Bush on the campaign trail, soon to become President of the USA) 

"We have all recently become aware of another insidious danger.  It is mankind and his activities which are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways."  (her speech to the UN General Assembly in 1988).

This autumn, I had seven days cycling and walking over the hills of the Scottish Borders

This autumn, I had seven days cycling and walking over the hills of the Scottish Borders.  I met a guy who commented that our society and culture is locked into fossil fuels. Such is our deep rooted addiction and complete dependency on them, we cannot survive without them.  Yet, they are quickly being burnt and, in the process, changing disastrously the chemical composition of the atmosphere. As Margaret Thatcher was well aware in the 1980s but did nothing!

Our food and drink landing on our table depends entirely on finite fossil fuels.  Without them we cannot feed ourselves or even get our drinking water.

Of course, we all have to become frugal fossil fuel users and, I think follow the example of Greta Thunberg.  I am also urging us all to insist that our political and civic leaders get their priorities sorted, show real leadership and reverse their spending priorities that lock us even more firmly into exploiting oil, coal and gas.

Apparently, Brexit is costing us billions that boost fossil fuel burning and disastrous greenhouse gas emissions.  As is the £1.8 BILLION, to 2026, to replace some buses and trains with trams in the Black Country and Brum. I am referring to Metro and Sprint that, along with Brexit, are all foolish diversions and a dangerous irrelevance from responding to climate catastrophe and the very mixed blessings of burning our remaining fossil fuels.  In the 1980s, I accepted the science that we are sleepwalking into a nightmare entirely of our own making.

If you think I am on the right lines, please write and speak to the leaders and their addresses, here:   September 2019 A5 flyer

Plus, to your MPs and MEPs and councillors.  Our priorities must change. Our personal life styles to one of minimum fossil fuel use.

From 25.5.19 to Deborah Cadman

“The more we spend, the more we burn fossil fuels, it seems to me.  Have I got this right?” SELF, 16 February 2019

“More or less right! … ”  SIR JONATHON PORRITT, 17 Feb 2019

"Just one caveat: as we decarbonise our grid, we’ll obviously be burning rather less of the reserves of remaining fossil fuels, and relying more on green electrons. But the rule of thumb still holds for the time being!"  Porritt, 27 October 2019

We are living infinitely on a finite planet;

Living unnaturally on a natural planet.

The epitomy of folly!

PROMPTED BY DAVID ATTENBOROUGH'S 'AFRICA' - episode 6 - 'The Future”

His talk of climate change and more difficulties for wildlife and humans provoked incensed, vitriolic  comments on 'The Independent' blog site.

1)  Why do so many contributors use such weird and wonderful names?  Are they so ashamed of what they write that they cannot bear to stand by their comments using their real names?

2)  Why does no-one ever concede a point or even give credit to a valid point made by someone else in the discussion?

3)  Nothing that the climate scientists tell us, ever makes the slightest difference.  We all go our own sweet way, anyway.  We all carry on regardless with our fingers crossed, doing what we want to continue with our ever-rising and unsustainable material standards of living.

4)  Even if the climate scientists are wrong (I hope they are) and James Delingpole IS right about everything (I hope he is), is it not wise to take all the many positive, practical and helpful measures that will leave more finite resources for future generations?  Living more simply so that others may simply live is simply ethical and ecological.

1. The history of the planet is one of constant warming and cooling periods that is perfectly natural and normal. What we, so intelligent and sophisticated and clever humans are doing, is NOT – and, we are part of nature and NOT above it and that is the problem!

2. It seems to have started with the white European races burning and clear felling their forests for farming and building. Now, everyone is doing it. Next, the Europeans started on the fossil fuels – in earnest from the 18^th century – converting carbon into carbon dioxide. Now, everyone is at it. So far, we have got away with it. It may not be for ever, however.

3. Margaret Thatcher, in one of her three major speeches on the environment as Prime Minister, commenting on our industrialisation said, "we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself.”

4.  This not too dissimilar from the more direct, "Either, we get our numbers and our activities into harmony with the powers of the earth to support life or, collapsing eco-systems will do the job for us." In other words, we either live within the rules of the way the planet works or, we get our come-uppance.  We respect and preserve and in harmony with eco-systems (life support systems) or, they collapse and our numbers and activities suffer.  We live within Nature's parameters or, Nature has the last word.

5.  The other unfortunate effect of ripping through our one-off geological inheritance is that we leave nothing for our children and grandchildren who will then be up against it. But, that doesn't matter because it will NEVER happen in OUR lifetime – and that's all that matters!

Uncomfortable home truths?

APHORISMS galore:

It is widely considered, it is universal, orthodox thinking, that we can go on expanding our numbers and activities on a planet that is not expanding.

We are living infinitely on a finite planet.

We are living unnaturally on a natural planet.

We are living for economic growth and population growth.

We are living beyond our means, our limits and our boundaries.

We have a live it up today and to hell with tomorrow mentality.

We are living today to come a cropper tomorrow!

What we take today, we don't have tomorrow.

We are liquidising our assets; living off capital as if its income.

Expansion economics from a diminishing capital resource base!

Economic growth is ecological retraction as the chickens eventually come home to roost.

Wealth creation is actually poverty creation.

There's no material gain without pain - eventually!

What goes up must come down - never ending wealth from economic and population growth must be living in cloud cuckoo land.  It must, eventually, lead to economic bust and population crash.

What takes an age for us, goes in the twinkling of an eye in the geological time scale of the earth.

Never before has the poor planet seen such an unnatural explosion of greenhouse gases, as the lot of us burn up the fossil fuels in 300 years that the earth took 300 million years to form.  Thus, the Lady must be right with this:

"We are embarked on a massive experiment with the very life support systems of the earth itself."  Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher (the most honourable thing she ever said!)

30th Falklands anniversay

Falklands War: A war that Argentina should easily have won had General Galteiri been more ruthless and competent and determined to keep the islands. His exocets might have been used to sink the troop carrying 'Canberra' before our troops disembarked. Our unlawful sinking of the 'Belgrano' led to over 400 sailors drowning and freezing to death. And, then,we rejoiced at our mighty victory and gave thanks to God, in St Paul's Cathedral, for his help! We were actually very, very lucky at having a military government in Argentina that was such an incompetent and corrupt bunch.

Our UK history and politics for centuries has had the Bible at its heart with every Monarch at their Coronation, vowing to abide by its strictures. One such is, "It is more blessed to give than to receive". In fact, like the Falkland Islands, for many centuries we just took and claimed for our own whatever piece of the planet we discovered. And, we fought other European powers over theirs and our territories and dependencies. Most notably, in the 1st World War that was the grand climax of centuries of Western European empire building, piracy and warfare around the globe.

The Christian thing would have been to have admitted we were out-manoeuvred, out-smarted and outplayed in every sphere of intelligence gathering and politics and, so allowed Argentina to keep the islands. Our intelligence services failed to be intelligent and to read the writings in the Argentine newspapers that showed how things were building up to the occupation. The islanders who did not wish to stay could have been re-settled in any part of the UK they wished, such as the islands off Scotland that are similar to the Falklands. Revenge is sweet, however, for every nation and President or Prime Minister. Especially for the Iron Fisted Lady of Downing Street.

Really, I suppose, it was her feelings of outrage that got the better of her. The instinct to hit back overcame the advisers' caution as to what the exocets could do to bring victory to Argentina. Recklessness was the watchword for Mrs Thatcher. She got away with it. She should, but most certainly does not, have on her conscience the deaths of nearly one thousand young people to allow three thousand Falklanders to stay where they should never have been put in the first place.

In early 1982, we let our guard down, withdrew our vessel, had talks at the UN to settle Argentina's claims on the islands and, we failed to read the writing on the wall. Therefore, we were sending a clear message to Galteiri that we would not send a task force to reclaim the islands that natural justice indicates should belong to Argentina - certainly not the UK! Even the US government was, at first, astonished at what Mrs Thatcher decided to do. However, they soon came round to support us against Argentina.

Mrs Thatcher should have done the decent thing and resigned and not sent 908 young men and women, from both nations, to a very early grave. Such is human nature, that Mrs Thatchers poll rating shot up as we Brits honoured a victorious war leader. The following year she was re-elected. Nature, of which we are part is, indeed, red in tooth and claw.

Those in power always use the dishonourable option of coercion, might is right and the sword to get their way - everytime. Things never change, whether we have elected dictatorships or unelected military dictatorships. They are all the same.

Over-bearing, over-here and everywhere - and nature nowhere!

Margaret Thatcher, when she was Prime Minister, in one of her three environment speeches said that we had begun a massive experiment with the very life support systems of the planet itself. She never spoke a truer word!

Yet, she did nothing to modify our behaviours that are threatening those ecosystems. Indeed, the problem is we are living unnaturally in a natural world and, we are part of nature. We are living infinitely in a finite world, convinced that money and energy grows on trees! We are living as God when the result is so far from God - so far from paradise.

We think we can increase our numbers infinitely and exponentially and that there will be no repercussions. Quite extraordinary!

A Green Party publication had: "Either, we get our numbers and our activities into harmony with the powers of the earth to support life or, collapsing ecosystems will do the job for us."