WHY USABLE CYCLE-WALKWAYS ARE ESSENTIAL!

One day, there will be no oil and no gas worth pumping out.  And, honestly, every drop needs left in the ground, NOW because of deadly greenhouse gases to give us the runaway greenhouse effect.  We will then have to go back to walking, cycling and horse riding to get about.  I am trying to postpone that time for my descendants.

Is it universal human nature to be warlike and to kill their own for the sake of domination?

The 1st World War, that the Western ‘Christian’ nations were responsible for, was the bloodiest war the world has ever seen.  It was slaughter on an industrial scale and started over Belgian neutrality. 1m British lives. alone, were wiped out.

Is it the white man’s nature to fight, to dominate and to kill any old human, especially black foreigners in other lands?  Or, would the black man be just as bad if given half the chance?  If the American Indians had discovered the vast resources that the white supplanters/settlers discovered would they have turned out exactly like the Americans - the world’s Emperor nation?  Or, is there something innate in the black man’s tribal ancestry, in his DNA, that makes him less keen to conquer nature, to dominate people, to kill and to be top dog?

The wise words from Chief Seattle indicate that certainly, originally, their view of their place on the earth was totally different from that of the 'Christian' white man. They saw their existence as part of the web of life; the Christian nations saw their place on the earth as, "Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever." (Westminster Confessional). The biblical perspective is certainly not part of Nature but a cut above Nature. The American Indians, the Maoris and the Aborigines all saw themselves belonging to the earth. The white man, with his arrival on every continent, brought the Bible and the belief that the earth belonged to them and they could do exactly what they liked, as often as they liked with never any repercussions from the earth's life support systems. After all, we are a cut above the rest of Creation; we are made a little lower than the angels; and, certainly we are not the human animal.

In addition, the Muslims or the Arabs have had decades of vast oil wealth but have not turned out like the rampaging, destructive, warlike white man of the Christian West.  Our lot killed millions of humans between 1914 and 2014 and very nearly brought about nuclear holocaust eg the Cuban Missile Crisis.  The other lot did not.  The closest were the evil Communists whose killings we like to exaggerate to make us feel better and to justify our killing of them in SE Asia.  And all this war on the godless Communists from 1945 to 1975 after they had, perhaps, ensured the defeat of Hitler with Stalin’s rearguard action, to begin with as the Communists fought to protect their homeland from the Nazis! No public and frequent acknowledgement that they, the Communists had been decisive in winning the war, in defeating Hitler. Only condemnation for not being democratic and for being so jealous to keep the eastern European nations under their sway as a buffer from the western European nations frequent wars and expansionism.

'The Age of Stupid'

Worth seeing. I saw it yesterday evening, put on by Transition Stourbridge. Another climate change film with a novel approach. You look out through a computer screen at Pete Postlethwaite operating a touch screen to bring down film clips to keep your attention and interest.

One is of a remarkable 82 year old mountain guide from Chamonix taking his clients up the Alps, including via ferrata and showing how glaciers have retreated. Good shot of Mt Blanc at one point. Another, clip of a young wealthy man setting up the Indian equivalent of Easy Jet or Ryanair and contrasted with crowded trains and poverty. One film of an heroic young English guy trying to set up nine wind turbines on an old airfield in Bedfordshire but being foiled by NIMBY protesters determined to keep their view (of elecy pylons, I expect!). Oil and Africa is also featured; animation to depict our glorious colonial past to bring civilisation and light to the heathen tribes in their darkness; and, a man saving lives in drowned New Orleans. Plus, much else.

Open letter on living it up for ever and a day!

WARNING! This is my green propaganda, green economics coming out as I
munch my lunch!

Thanks for the thoughts, Colin, from Newsnight.

I have not heard that speculators and the work of OPEC are responsible for
the 12p/litre price difference between petrol and diesel. I have heard
that it is due to the greater demand for diesel than petrol and greater
difficulties in processing diesel compared with petrol. As regards oil in
general, experts on Radio 4 news programmes have mentioned speculators as
being partly to blame, as well as supply/demand problems.

Far safer to take home the message of rising prices that the more we
conserve the stuff through keeping to speed limits, cycling and
driving/flying less, the more we will keep prices down and preserve the
planet's wealth.

Far more sensible to assume that we may be approaching peak oil plateau and
take the green message that money and energy do not grow on trees, more
seriously. The problem is that none of us want to change our lifestyles
and patterns of behaviour until we are forced to! I certainly don't want
to give up my Scottish car camping holidays in Scotland in April and May
every year. But, as you so rightly put it at Llanrug, fuel rationing must
be introduced for the good of all of us and future generations.

I am now writing about fuel rationing being more important than congestion
charging and, rationing as an essential part of making all life last that
little bit longer.

All the best

Tim

PS The first law of capitalism and of conventional economic wisdom is that
we must rip into all finite resources as if they are infinite.
The second law is that you live only for the present and pay no regard over
our future prospects.
The third law is that you don't cost in anything like the full or complete
or external costs of our exploitation of our one off cornucopia of
resources.

It is a live now pay later economics where the message of ever rising
prices for food, fuel and everything else has no bearing on our over
consumption, over population, over reaching of ourselves. We just carry on
over doing it without any acknowledgement that the complacent and careless, "You've never
had it so good" bonanza may have something to do with it!

Our leaders and the people are all in denial, I think!