Why this photo?

Because if we don’t do something about this…

we’ll all be headed for the ‘grand exit’!

After WW2 the world slowly began to wake up to the fact that we were heading for trouble: we were having a massive and increasingly undeniable (unless you are the recent Ex-President of the US ) impact upon the world in which we live.  Since the work of Stormer and Crutzen (2000) we have begun to call this period the Anthropocene [The root is Greek: mankind + new period].

The pioneers noting evidence of our impact upon the modern world include people like Rachel Carson and her 1962 book ‘Silent Spring’ linking the extinction of species with human environmental impact (particularly the use of DDT).

There were also no end of events like Chernobyl the radioactive cloud from which blew West and (amongst other things contaminated sheep pastures in the North of England and Scotland to the extent that in some areas the grazing of sheep was banned for more than 30 years (Guardian Article) after the event (and in some places still is).   Plus, something you may not have heard about at all: the French Secret Services sinking Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior ship in Wellington Harbour NZ (with the loss of a life) in mid 1985, reportedly upon the orders of the Minister of Defence/ and quite possibly with the knowledge of the then President.

See the ina.fr news coverage (in French) below.

All in order to clear the area of protestors so more nuclear testing could take place.   All of a sudden Environment was catapulted onto the front pages worldwide and environmental protestors were no longer ‘nutters‘ or extremists, they were heroes.  That one event even influenced Margaret Thatcher who made her subsequent Mansion House Speech (a bit like the US State of the Union Address) upon the subject and put it firmly upon the British political map:  ‘the environment‘ could now win or lose votes…..

We were also ‘joining the dots‘ (like in young children’s drawing and colouring books) and we began to understand the depletion of our resources.  Population was increasing dramatically and predictably and consumption and competition for resources were in a massive, permanent state of growth:-

• More people with more needs and wants to satisfy.
• One Earth with fixed resources.

It doesn’t take a genius to realise where that would inevitably lead: to a situation where the resources would simply not be enough … perhaps not even enough for our basic needs, let alone wants and desires…. and then what of the basic needs of future generations: what of them and their life expectations?  Would it become more a case of survival than life? We can see today that this is so:

• small, low-lying island nations in the Pacific are being steadily washed away
• African (not only) nations are suffering from excessive heat, lower rainfal levels and it is becoming impossible for many communities built on subsistence farming to continue as their crops repeatedly fail: and these are communities and nations who have not reached anything like our level of industrialisation and contribute all but nothing to global warming and climate change, yet they suffer the most from their consequences.  [IMHO, the levels of migration we are currently seeing from South to North (across the Mediterranean … over the Mexico/USA border) are just the first signs of this – the tip of a largely unseen iceberg below the waterline.  Where does ‘living‘ become ‘survival‘?…
  • Have we already passed the ‘Tipping Point‘?
  • Are we at the ‘Tipping Point‘?
  • Are we approaching it?
  • [IMHO. Regardless of our personal perspectives on this, we have to do something.  6900 people arrived on the Isle of Lampedusa in one day last week ( at that rate it would make 2.5 million in a year!) – they made heartbreaking decisions to risk their lives, leave their families, homes, heritage and their homeland & cultures and invest all their past savings in a flimsy boat passage on the high sea for the hope of a possible better future: ‘life‘ rather than just ‘survival‘.  I’m sure there may be some with other motives: but surely no mother puts her children and babies in a little boat on a perilous journey unless there is no alterntive?]
  • There is a good 2009 film about our epoch called ‘The Age of Stupid‘ [you can find it here on YouTube] in which the premis is that, in the future, when Planet Earth and human life is in its last throes, a survivor finds a way to communicate with us across time to ask our generation(s) how we could possibly do so little once we were in possession of the incontovertible evidence of Climate Change when we still had the opportunity to do something about it.  It is a sobering thought.  I’ve just watched it again… how much more ‘difficult‘ things have become since 2009… was my reaction.

In 1983, the United Nations appointed Gro Harlem Brundtland (a Norwegian Prime Minister) to head the World Commission on Environment and Development [the link is to it in its latest UN incarnation nearly 40years on!  Yes 40!) to address this critical issue with a view to coming up with a long term solution to the problem of dwindling resources.  A global problem in need of a global solution that MUST work.  Not an easy job!  Hardly a surprise, then, that this 1987 magnum opus bears her name: The Brundtland Report.  It was printed in book form and called:

• Notre Avenir à Tous
• Our Common Future

It called ‘Sustainability’ into being and produced a definition (based on the ‘what’ and a little bit of the ‘how’….. but little of the when, who, why and where) but it did something important: it suggested that it was entirely feasible as a concept: it could work IF four specific preconditions were met.    This video of mine introduces this matter and asks you to think about these preconditions and whether you see them being met in decisions you hear being made by individuals (yourself, even), organisations, corporations, politicians, governments, the international community etc…..

Brundtland’s Preconditions for Sustainability

So what do YOU think?……………….  and what YOU think IS critical here.  Why?  Because we all make decisions based upon what we think and believe to be the case.  In one sense it doesn’t matter what some official position or definition is: where you (and every one of us are concerned) we each ‘call the shots‘ as we see them.

It may not always be pleasant to think of our failures, but as the American Marines’ motto says:

« When the Going gets Tough, the Tough get Going! »

– it should motivate us to try all the harder….

Now, as to the context of the period in the run-up to the Brundtland Report (a little of which I covered above), here is me on the subject.

The Brundtland Report Context

A more modern take on sustainability and climate change has been provided inter alia by:

Al Gore (former US VP and American president but for 26 ‘hanging chads‘ in Florida in the US election that GW Bush won) who has used his missing out on being president to champion the Environmental movement globally.  He won an Oscar for his feature length documentary film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’.  If you haven’t seen it, then you should.   Here he is being very funny about his past, but very serious offering suggestions on TED about how we can individually address sustainability challenges.

Al Gore’s Recommendations

 Big Al goes further than this – he has set up what is called the Climate Reality Project and they have a global, 24 Hour Climate Reality Countdown event every year you should be able to link to from their site above or from TED. … Most of it is likely to be available online to anyone with an internet connection (the specific means of connection have yet to be published).  They also offer training and leadership packages if you would like to become more involved…

The BIG ‘Wake-Up’ Call: Mark Lynas’ ‘Six Degrees’

Here he takes all the quality scientific research he could find and catalogued it into predictions of 1°C rise in temperature by 2100, 2°, 3°, 4°, 5° and 6°C.  He used this research and grouped together the predictions for the impact upon life on Earth of each degree.  It is stunning and shocking to say the least.  This is the National Geographic 6 Degrees documentary that resulted.  It is over an hour long, but it certainly bears watching as it is firmly anchored in science.  He also offers a 2020 update based upon what he sees as ‘9 Planetary Boundaries‘: « climate, biodiversity, and chemical pollution—atmospheric aerosols, ocean acidification, excess nitrogen in agriculture, too much land in agriculture, freshwater scarcity, and ozone depletion » (The Long Now Foundation 2020)

But, even so, Be Encouraged…!

As I said before, it is easy to become disheartened and somewhat negative about all this, but listen for a moment to JFK (sadly assassinated shortly after this speech to graduating students at the American University in 1962).  Coming out of the Cuban Missile Crisis which had taken the world to the very brink of Nuclear war, Kennedy brought not just the ‘light’ of hope, but a laser-beam searchlight of hope!  DO watch this video and believe that, as another former President said: ‘Yes we can! »

John F Kennedy on hope and the ability of mankind to address the seemingly impossible.

NB. On the video link above listen to the wonderful words from 6 – 8 minutes into the clip.  I fact, as this speech followed an almost WW3 (Cuban Missile Crisis) and we are now on a ‘war footing‘ with Russia, I think we should all watch this!  Please do!  It gives hope!

If that doesn’t encourage you – I don’t know what will….!

I also have elements of this speech cited on my website in text form, along with other resources combined in one of my News articles.

Now what are you prepared to do in your Personal and Professional Life to Put the Planet First????

Tony