It’s funny how sometimes something that, to start with, makes you feel cut off and isolated can actually open your eyes and make you see the bigger picture.
I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your notice that over the past few weeks the weather has been more than a little rough. With winds of over 100mph reported on the North Wales coast, flooding, power cuts and lightening strikes, people and wildlife have been tested to the limit this Winter.
I arrived home after a lovely Christmas and New Year spent with friends and family to find that the winds have ripped down the aerial from my roof, so that I have no television reception. It may sound trivial, but when you live alone with very slow internet and very poor radio reception, it does get very quiet without a television, the only sound being the wind howling around in the trees outside. (There’s only so many hours of iTunes you can endure!)
I promptly borrowed a DVD player from my brother and started watching some David Attenborough box sets that I’d never had time to sit and watch before. I do love David Attenborough as so many others do, he’s just the most inspiring man. Anyway, after watching Frozen Planet I started on ‘Attenborough: 60 Years in the Wild’. It’s incredible how attitudes have changed during his career. You can tell he feels embarrassed or ashamed about some of the things that were acceptable in the 1950s. The last DVD was titled Our Fragile Planet. It really is eye-opening stuff, the lengths that some people have to go to to survive in areas where the seasons change so rapidly. Yet, it is heartening to know that people can still live along side wildlife in a sustainable way.
I also started downloading the ‘Best of Natural History Radio’ podcast. I can’t believe it’s taken a gust of wind strong enough to rip the aerial off my roof to make me start listening to this! The ones I’ve listened to so far have been discussing “Are there too many people on earth for wildlife to thrive?” and “Do we care too much about nature?”.They’re such challenging yet relevant subjects they really got me thinking. The balance between our own immediate needs, the needs of wildlife and the needs of the planet as a whole to slow climate change. Is simply reducing the number of people on earth enough to make a significant change to the future of the planet, or would changing our consumption and waste levels get the desired effect? There are over seven billion people on earth today and scientists estimate there could be up to eleven billion by 2050. Globally we already produce enough food for around ten billion people but we waste so much that there are people in developing countries who are still in danger of starvation.
One thing they discussed was the affect of people consuming less meat (becoming vegetarian). Apparently this would make some difference but the problem is that most vegetarians substitute meat with dairy or other livestock products which use nearly as much energy to produce. They say that more people becoming vegan would make a significant difference. This reminded me of something I saw last month a scheme innovatively called ‘Veganuary’ (not a fan of the name!), encouraging people to become vegan for January. Obviously a one off, one month whim wouldn’t make much difference but it made me think about how much of a cultural shift would be needed for people to change to a vegan lifestyle. I must admit in terms of finances and time I’m not sure I would be able to make the change, but people are so easily influenced by fame and trends, you never know maybe one day being vegan will be the norm.
I suppose education would make a big difference. Taking teenagers to a self sustaining farm and teaching them some skills that would allow them to be able to grow and consume their own produce is something I would definitely back. Sadly in most cases this direction would need to come from governments and written into the curriculum. As far as I can see, if it clashes with economic growth then it’s not likely to happen in the near future. There are parallels with the issues we encounter in the uplands where farmers and land managers often lack the skills and confidence to use traditional management methods which would be beneficial to many upland species.
Maybe the solution to these challenges is to invent a time machine and take people both to the future and past to learn from our mistakes (like A Christmas Carol?), but other than that, I think discussions will go on for many years.