he most pressing matter must be the life of the planet.
There will be 10 billion of us by the next generation. It was
2.5 billion when I was born. Yet we seem to get drawn into
other arguments that fail to bear down on the fact that our
ability to function as human beings will terminate some time soon, if
we don’t act now. How soon is soon is open to speculation, depending
on which expert you speak to.
The environment seems to be the big issue. But the problem is, how
do you crack open this particular nut? By which I mean how do you crack
the nut that, although lots of people talk about the environment, most
people are more tied up with other things. Like getting through the day.
Making ends meet.
In fact most people who exist in the world at the moment are having
a hard time of things. They are up against it. So drawing them into
arguments about the life of the planet seems as relevant as asking them
to choose the new wallpaper for a royal palace.
So if the environment is the big Big One then how do we get it into
the minds of people who are exhausted just surviving? How do we
move the fi ght for the environment away from solely those that have the
time and energy to contemplate the life of the future planet? And pass it
on also to those who don’t have the luxury to conceive of risks that are
not immediate.
Not to say that the planet’s health is not threatened immediately.
The loss of species – a UN report says we’re threatening one million
with extinction – means a decreasing ability to experiment with natural
products coming out of a biodiverse world: and this lays us open to
pandemics. Not being able to learn from a disappearing nature will
seriously stymie our ability to counter the pandemics of the future.
The environment must become the concern of all of us and for that
there’s a need to destroy poverty and increase the educated of the world.
A world where people have more means to allow them to look up from
their daily strife.
Therefore we have to wrap a number of things into the fi ght for
the environment. It can’t just be seen as a single issue. The fi ght to end
poverty must be seen as an environmental issue. The fi ght for education
must be seen as a fi ght for the environment. The fi ght for social justice
must be seen as an environmental fi ght.
The fi ght for the environment must be seen as a fi ght to cluster our
concerns into this big portmanteau that enables us to spread justice and
opportunity in a green and sustainable way.
If we do not push environmentalism up the list of our concerns we
may well be accused by future generations of fi ddling while Rome burns.
Or to take a DiCaprio-Winslet-inspired variation: rearranging the deck
chairs on the Titanic. We need to be asking big questions about our
purchases, for instance our soya-laced co�fee: is it the soya that’s grown in
the destroyed rainforests of the Amazon? Are our plastic cups and bottles
heading towards the river, the sea, and then the ocean?
At the end of Covid-19, if this is not mere wishful thinking, we need to
be asking how we repair and sustain nature. And not allow the world to
become a vast tip. Or a bigger tip than it is at the moment.To think that all the really big damage to the world has been
done in the last 50 years. How quick it becomes a case of extinction
and not simply a slow erosion as it has been since the time of
the Romans.
Of course at the same time we have to encourage the growth of the
science that can prevent the worst e�fects of this shrinkage of the natural
world. We have to try and protect the seas and the air we breathe and
fi nd ways of cleaning up the debris that is already about us.
But the environment has to become sticky to us all, and not simply to
the committed. And that should involve an enormous fi ght against the
exhaustion of working and feeding the family.
One thing the governments of the world could do is put a price on
every bottle that is ever produced from plastic. Every co�fee cup, every
little piece of litter. Put a price on it and thus monetise it, like beer bottles
and soda bottles. Look upon plastic as a harvest which we can rid from
the world because it raises cash for people needing it.
Once again let me repeat a little story I heard about Anita Roddick;
I’ve used this over many years:
Anita was in Nepal and was told that the streams from the mountain
waters were drying up because the cyclamen �lower was growing in
the streams and blocking the easy �low. Anita found out from a paper
merchant that you could make paper out of cyclamen. So she called for
as much of it as possible.
It became a crop. And hence soon stopped blocking the waterways.
We need that kind of thinking around plastic. But a lot, lot more.
Let’s declare war on the ignorances that surround us and make the
environment the key to all changes.Hoping for a sea change
If we’re going to save the life of our
T planet, we really need to clean up our act
opinion.THIS WEEK JOHN WILL BE
John Bird is the founder and Editor in Chief of The Big Issue.
@johnbirdswords
linkedin.com/in/johnbirdswords
[email protected]JOHN BIRDThere are big issues.
And then there’s
the planetFROM 01 MARCH 2021 BIGISSUE.COM | 17READING: The Story-Teller Retrieves
the Past by Mary LascelleWATCHING: Further episodes
of French comedy Call My Agent!
on Net�lixLISTENING TO: Franz Schubert’s
Fantasie in F Minor for four handsAT: The All Party Parliamentary
Group for Future Generations’ event
on ‘Risk management in the UK:’