Right, it's time to take action! Now normally I'm a bit apathetic or just plain cynical (or maybe just too lazy) when it comes to petition type things, but I decided I'm going to change my ways for one issue at least. That issue is going to be climate change and the capping of Carbon Dioxide emissions. In the past I have actually been quite dismissive of the whole climate change thing, or at least mankinds contribution to it - I didn't have any doubt that the world has been heating up over the past century. I mean the Earth's climate has fluctuated wildly over its lifetime and the reasons for it were probably solar, or volcanic in origin. But I've come round to the view that mankind is certainly contributing a majority of the current temperature increase, and this could cause us some rather large problems in the not too distant future. There've been many recent climate reports from all sorts of governments and NGOs, all of which give very stark warnings about what will happen, but still governments (which as I just said have commissioned some of these reports) have not put any substantial policy into action - and I don't care about the Kyoto agreement, because it was fairly wishy washy and insubtantial in the first place. After seeing yet another report on these issues on Newsnight tonight I thought I'd write to my MP on these issues i.e. getting a yearly commitment to specific, and tough, CO_2 reduction targets, having a dedicated minister responsible for dealing with these issues and getting all other departments to legislate with these targets as a top priority, and also the need for these issues to be a top priority on a world stage. Now it was mentioned on Newsnight that Friends of the Earth, unsuprisingly, are campaining on these very things, and actually have a letter draft already set up - saving me the bother of writing one myself. This letter will be emailed to your local MP to encourage them to sign a proposed bill addressing the first of my points above. I encourage you to follow the link and send the letter in, or write your own letter and send it to everyone you can think of i.e. Tony Blair, the Queen, etc. Also encourage all your friend to send it in, email and pester them about it, also get your non-British friends to send a similar letter to there government representatives. This is only a first start obviously, but if everyone does this for as a first thing and then keeps sending more emails/letters and the like then thing may get done!!
Now I just have to find a way to justify my flight from Glasgow to London today, rather than walking down and planting trees on my way.
It's more than a bit bad when you realise exactly how fucked we're going to be if we don't drastically change our ways very soon.
ReplyDeleteIf there is something I can do other than limiting my own carbon footprint and encouraging other people to reduce theirs, I'd like to know what it is and do it. I've got a feeling it does involve planting trees...
Actually, Matt does have some wild enviro-scheme involving trees, government grants, paintball and the Highlands which almost sounds like a viable business plan.