New board; new title.
Is there anybody left who actually believes that we are NOT fucking up the planet?
If so, I would absolutely love to see your reasoning.
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Parasites will always find a new host.
Mars here we come 
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Trump, Tony Abbatt, BoJo.
I think the rest of the world can see the harm we as a race are doing to the planet
Brazilian president springs to mind.
Then again it breaks my heart seeing what we’re doing all over the planet. Everything from Japanese fishing practices, torching the Amazon, our growing thirst for energy.
One thing that links all of these “leaders” together is simple greed. Why? I cant say. They cant take it with them after their short time on this planet but their behavior will take far longer to rectify.
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Is there anybody left who actually believes that we are NOT fucking up the planet?
Just a few thousand million in China…
Technically not true as they have only 1.4 thousand million
I do think most people care to varying degrees but I do hate it when some would think they are holier than thou because they went out to protest and you did not
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Couldn’t agree more with this article; I’ve long argued that the car is one of the worst things about modern life.
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I haven’t taken part in demos either in the last ten years and I’m ashamed to say it’s because I’ve resigned myself to our fate. I only have admiration for those who are still fighting and correspondingly are actually holier than me.
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I was so unhappy with myself that I gave in to temptation yesterday and chose the car sharing option to get round a public transport strike. Never again.
A good article, that. While we may have the feeling that nothing changes, there is actually a silent revolution ongoing, initiated by the cities, less so than by the national governments (at least in Europe, can’t tell for other parts of the world).
Many cities are about to totally transform their way of how people live and move. Anyone visiting a city he hasn’t seen since ten-twenty years will be struck by the change: less cars in the inner areas, much more and better public transport, more bicycles lanes and pedestrian ways, publicly available bikes and scooters (e-scooters).
The problem for the time being is that the inner areas are being addressed in many cities, but the outer areas are often far less well treated, with less money available. In that sense, the idea that going forward, outer circles of bigger cities should be treated as new centers with the same qualities as the inner/historical centers is a good one.
The big issue will as always be the financing.
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Do people think that a big part of the problem is our tendency to congregate into cities? This is obviously driven by work, needs, business and transport links.
I suppose @Hope.in.your.heart’s thoughts that cleaning up these areas becomes more critical, but the downside is that as business moves away from smaller areas people in these areas are forced to travel.
Well I suppose that treating suburbs like new centers has to include creating space for businesses. The problem of modern cities throughout the XXth century is often an exaggerated concentration of working places in the center, with suburbs being merely degraded to dormitory towns.
London and many other big cities are an outstanding example of this. You can’t live in the center anymore because prices are extortionate. Far too much space is allocated to offices, and that forces a lot of people to travel hours per day to get to their jobs. It’s highly irrational and unsustainable in the long term imo.
The idea to create new centers, also with the right amount of working places, is the right way forward imo. Nobody needs those large office clusters in city centers anymore imo, especially not with the progress made by remote work.
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yes, I’ve done the London commute and I can only describe it as awful. At best it was between 1.5 - 2hrs each way, every day. At it’s worst I think I hit 5hrs once. I lasted 8 months.
I’m happy to say that my current employer is embracing the home working side of things. That has massive advantages for me including a hefty saving on my monthly fuel bill. So far. That will depend on how Clients want us to do things I suspect but I’m ok for now.
From my local area perspective though I’m lucky. I can work from home. Many in my local area cant, even a weekly shop can be a challenge staying local in some instances. There’s a dearth of jobs in the local area and people have to travel simply to work. We have lots of plumbers though.
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Missed opportunity I feel.
I’ve been working from home for the last 7 months and feel a whole lot better for it. Fuel bill is down, not sure how long that will last but I’ve also communicated to the director that I want to carry on with this arrangement. Fair play to him for asking the question I say.
I can partly understand the concern with everyone working away from city centres. There are a lot of businesses that need those workers. Shutting that tap off has probably hurt them. But I still feel it’s a missed opportunity to drive change
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Well worth a read.
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If only the political leaders, and their sponsors, the economical leaders, could at the good last get the full message…
But since decades, it always seems to fall on deaf ears. Profit is the only word these people seem to understand. Everything else, including their own life, seems to fade into insignificance compared to that one magical word.
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Short termism with a lot of it.
They don’t care because they will never see the damage they do.
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You’re right.
We need a fundamental shift away from that, but how?
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The two following paragraphs are enlightening I think:
(…) You forced your civilisation upon us and now look where we are: global pandemic, climate crisis, species extinction and, driving it all, widespread spiritual poverty. In all these years of taking, taking, taking from our lands, you have not had the courage, or the curiosity, or the respect to get to know us. To understand how we see, and think, and feel, and what we know about life on this Earth.
I won’t be able to teach you in this letter, either. But what I can say is that it has to do with thousands and thousands of years of love for this forest, for this place. Love in the deepest sense, as reverence. This forest has taught us how to walk lightly, and because we have listened, learned and defended her, she has given us everything: water, clean air, nourishment, shelter, medicines, happiness, meaning. And you are taking all this away, not just from us, but from everyone on the planet, and from future generations. (…)
What could help us massively at this point is the humility to recognise that our materialistic ways lead us right into a wall, and a curiosity for other ways of living.