Blog Action Day is on Thursday

Blog Action Day is when bloggers around the world write something on their blog to make us all go out and do something to help Save The Planet.

This is my contribution.

Personally I think the people living on this planet a couple of generations from now are screwed. Now adays there are just too many of us wanting more and more and still have almost no regard for what is going to happen by the time the more serious effects of climate change take place. Why should we, we'll all be dead. Scientist are predicting a 90 cm rise in sea levels by the end of the century. 90 cm is 3 feet in imperial measure. When I stand any where along the sea front in Torquay at high tide it doesn't look like an other 3 feet will actually come over the sea wall so why will it bother me and why should I be bothered if it does in 90 years. They can always build the wall a bit higher.

The same scientists are predicting wilder weather with hotter summers and stormier winters. I can manager that.

I read in the papers that China and India both have booming economies and the populations there, almost one third of the world’ people are finally about to join the First World. The First World has so much food that a noticeable percent gets thrown away in the garbage every week, The First World wants, and in many places has two or three cars parked outside the front door. And, if one of those cars is old enough the government will pay you to throw it away and buy a new one. I’m guilty myself (one a smaller scale). I bought a cheap mobile phone but didn’t like it. So I went out and bought an other mobile phone. It’s too easy to do.

The First World uses enormous amounts of power to run the various electrical goods we can no longer manage with out. This computer for instance. The fridge, the two freezers, the washing machine, the toaster, the microwave, the oven, the electric kettle, the central heating system, the Hi Fi system, the portable CD player I don’t use because I have an iPod and an iPod Shuffle, the TV, the DVD player the V+ Box the phone and it’s answering machine, the mobile phones and their chargers, the printer, the computer sound system, the vacuum cleaner the electric grass cutter, the electric shower, the shaving light and finally the eclectic toothbrush. Sorry nearly forgot, the camera uses batteries. Oh yeah, the electric door bell. And two bedside radios, one has only FM and had to be replaced with digital. 60 years ago when I was a young child the only electrical goods we had in our house in Manchester were a wireless and ten light bulbs. The Third World is going to want that lot and all the new goodies coming on line everyday.

The First World is run by elected politicians who wish to stay in power, that is get re elected so they aren’t going to try and pass measures to curb the above excesses in their own populations because they wont get re elected. And they have no power or even the cheek to say to Third World countries around the world “No sorry. We’ve had all the fun and will continue to do so but you have to stay in the Dark Ages for the sake of the human race.”( And a whole lot of animals and plants as well.)

So it isn’t lack of knowledge about climate change that will screw us and a whole lot of animals and plants but a lack of interest. One example, a bit of an interest of mine at the moment. The government here in the UK decide to provide free bus travel to the over 60s. They promised that it would be funded out of government money and neither the councils running the scheme at local level nor the bus companies would end up any better or worse off. My local council is already down by millions and the local bus company also complain they aren’t getting enough, they appealed to government to get more money than the council gave then. Central government refuse to acknowledge that there is a problem in the way money is allocated to local councils so we are still short.

Short enough to have to start making cuts in council services and make people redundant so they can pay the bus companies the money due to them for carrying all us lucky over 60s for free. Soon the council will have made all the cuts they can and if they make any more staff redundant the councillors themselves will have to go out and collect the rubbish bins . So they will have to tell the bus company there is only half the money they asked for. So what will the bus company do? It will cut bus services, it has no other choice. Less buses equals more cars on the roads. More cars on the roads, more greenhouse gases to reflect all that heat back to earth.

Is that what central government want or have they even bothered to work it out. I go for a lack of bother myself. In how many other areas and in how many other governments and big commercial institutions is the same lack of bother evident? Is it hardly surprising that so many ordinary people in the street while expressing concern about climate change feel there isn’t much that can be, or will be, done to save the planet.

This is why we are screwed.

PS The planet will still be here in a couple of thousand years when climate change has done its worst and the weather starts to settle down again. It will be seriously short of many of the animals and plants that used to grace it but don't worry Charles Darwin will wave his magic wand and in time (millions of years) all will be restored.