Suddenly we are told that the UK is not to meet the environmental targets, i.e. carbon dioxide emissions, as agreed by 2010.
This does not come as a big surprise although it has only been made official a couple of days ago.
The other related issue of the past couple of months is that because the North Sea Oil sources are going to finish soon, we will have to face an energy crisis.
One alternative is going back to nuclear power, the UK more or less gave up on nuclear power stations a few decades ago because well, nobody wants to live next to it. The few remaining are old and will need to be dismantled in the coming years (another big environmental issue).
I don't see many ways out at the moment.
The political issue about the environment is that no government is prepared to do anything about it mainly due to the way democracy works in a modern capitalist country:
- elections every few years, therefore governments have to think about being re-elected and are scared of any policy that might be unpopular in the short term (and parties these days are all basically the same party with different names for the above-mentioned reasons)
- the whole economy is based on growth
- people want to maintain their standard of living and whenever possible improve it, we lead fairly stressful lives therefore accumulation of possessions, foreign holidays etc are seen as necessary gratifications
- the power and lobby that multinationals and big businesses have on any government
I might be pessimistic but at the moment I don't see any solutions unless people decide to do something about it and are prepared to sacrifice their standards of living (less cars? less flying? can we do that?) and start to vote for the few parties that have a more environmental friendly agenda.
