Blog Action Day 2009
This is the first time I’ve participated in Blog Action Day, so do forgive me if it is utter poo. The subject this year is Climate Change and for various reasons I feel like I should at least have an opinion on this.
Reason one: I live on this planet. Perhaps not mentally or emotionally for a good deal of the average day, but the corporeal bit of my is very much of this earth.
Reason two: I am currently a science student. If I didn’t have at least some kind of opinion on one of the biggest science subjects around at the moment there would be frankly little hope for me.
Reason two and a half: The reason I’m a science student is because I’m very very interested (read: I could converse about it for days) in science communication, and the way that science information gets to non scientists.
The thing about reason 2.5 is that an awful lot of things that are communicated about science, be that via television, the internet or the Daily Mail’s ongoing fetish for all things oncological, much of it requires no audience interaction. Generally the audience is expected to passively take in this fascinating/crazy/scary/wasteful [delete as appropriate to publication] set of findings, or at least a cut-down and sexed up version of them. Perhaps there’ll be some whinging about universities having too much money to fund cheese sandwich measuring in the Prove You’re an Idiot Have Your Say section, or a sudden rush on tuna sales in a bid to prevent some previously not heard of, and frankly rare, type of cancer. But that’s about it.
Climate Change though is different. This stuff you are supposed to remember. You are supposed to act on. And in trying to get people to pay attention, communication seems, to me, to have become antagonistic.
Regular readers will know, and so that we stay friends they try and forget, that I happen to like the poster child of planet damage; Top Gear. For those not familiar TG is the BBC’s motoring programme. Technically it is a tad older than me, but in practical terms it is a 7 year old that has just discovered how cool cars look when they go fast. It annoys safety people for being irresponsible with speed, it annoys consumer folk for focusing on expensive cars, and it annoys green campaigners by and large because Clarkson behaves like a tosswad.
However, as Clarkson, and all those other overgrown 7year olds that aren’t on TV, annoy Climate Change people, the CC people in turn annoy them. And so it goes in circles. With one party thinking the other to be inconsiderate, and the other thinking the first stuffy.
Frankly I think they’re both a wee bit right.
Much as those with some excess personal baggage know that a touch less food, and a touch more arse moving, would help; most drivers know that it isn’t good for the planet (I’m going by the drivers I know-this ain’t scientific, or quantitative). Similarly most of us know that buying new shiny televisions, laptops and mobile ‘phones expends way too much energy and uses a plethora of unpronounceable things that aren’t great for the planet.
However, the thing is shiny new laptops, mobile ‘phones that have a hundred functions we never use, and those fuck me that’s fast Lamborghinis are fun. We don’t just surround ourselves with this stuff for practical purposes, we have them because we like them (well clearly I don’t have a Lamborghini since I can’t drive, and er, I’m skint).
Yes it is extraordinarily greedy all this stuff, and some might think it sad that people be made happy by things, but it does make some people happy. Some things make this person happy. Maybe I’m shallow but my little red laptop genuinely brings me joy. And goodness me I know it is shameful but there is something tremendously sexy about the sound of a grunty turbo.
So I absolutely understand why the car-loving folk feel like someone is trying to take their fun away. Equally, though, I understand why some of it really does need to go. Most of it really.
It’s hard letting go of stuff that you enjoy, and it’s no less hard when the other party doesn’t always appear to acknowledge that it is hard.
For instance, ignoring the enjoyment that people get from their vehicles, giving up cars from a practical point of view is tremendously hard. If you live in London it is pretty easy, apart from tube strike days. So too if you live in any reasonably sized city-Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Nottingham are all pretty well served for public transport, or have safe cycling paths.
In more rural areas it is by and large, not great. The town in which I live has a train station but it has only a track that goes up, and down. So fabulous should you wish to go to Nottingham, Leeds and Sheffield. Utterly useless for getting anywhere to the left or right. To complete a journey to a town within the same county as I am I have to go to a totally different county to start with.
The town in which my college is situated did not have a train station of its own until about 10 years ago, for the preceding thirty odd years the station in my town was named for both (this wasn’t an evil Beeching doing), and was college town’s local station. My town is 12 miles away from college town, to journey to the nearest city why would you schlep a dozen miles to the train station, when you could just drive down the M1? I’m staggered that it took so many years to realise that 12 miles is not around the corner, unless you happen to be nine foot tall.
The two tracks don’t join up though. So there’s no train between the two.
The buses take in an overly labourious tour of the northern parts of both counties, and so even at 7.30 when the traffic isn’t yet particularly busy it takes well over an hour.
I’m a non driver so I’ve long been used to having to get up earlier, and spend an hour or more sat on my bum, but for people who do drive there isn’t a particularly good immediate incentive to give up their cars. And woe betide if you are foolish enough to live in a smaller town where the buses have been planned on the assumption that you’ll only leave the village to go shopping.
I think we need a bit more carrot than stick. It is a massive threat to life on this planet, but as anyone who has tried to reason with a teenager knows there’s no point threatening they’ll just do more of what you don’t want them to do, not less.
The carrots by and large have to come from the government. They could do with a better calculator for starters, since the free pass for over sixties was badly underestimated and plenty of bus companies are still owed their funds.
- They certainly need to fund public transport with the idea that people travel quite some distances to work and school. Gone are the days when everyone worked in the town they live in and only left for an evening out in the big city. Children routinely travel across county boundaries for school, not only for those bouts of parental competitiveness, but because of available spaces and unplanned house moves. People live where they can afford, and that isn’t always where they work.
- Second we need our naffing tracks back. I will save you from one of my Beeching rants, but it should be possible for a person to get from one town to another in the same county, by train, without having to travel into a different county.
- More buses. Standing for an hour, which is not uncommon on busy routes, is tedious and sends people back to their cars.
- More school buses. Nothing quite like a bus full of screeching teenagers to put adults off using public transport. Its not fun for either group, the schoolchildren keep getting told off, and the other passengers have to ram their headphones right into their ears.
- Fund fare reductions. If I catch a bus before 9.30 it costs me twice as much as after, and since my classes start at 9.30, and the vast majority of people start work at 9 we don’t have much choice about this.
- Encourage cross company tickets. In Nottingham they have kangaroo tickets that you can use on TrentBarton, NCT and NET (tram). Its a reasonable price. The nearest relation in Derbyshire is considerably more expensive and is aimed at tourists. There should be regional versions, that are a reasonable cost and allow people to get from one town to another without needing six different tickets.
- Acknowledge that people do get enjoyment from cars. Perhaps for some its because they want to sit in their bubble picking their nose, but for an awful lot it’s about fun. And occasionally a bit of love, lust and sex. Pretending it isn’t a component is as silly as trying to pretend your daughter isn’t dating that bloke you hate, she won’t dump him just because you pretend he doesn’t exist. The aim really should be to make public transport good enough that the only people who are still driving are those that are really in love with it. (Frankly I’m not sure you should really be allowed to be in charge of a potential killing machine if you don’t enjoy driving it).
- Acknowledge that hybrid and electric cars are a tad dull. There’s a growing range of hybrids, but depending on how you drive a lot of the time having a hybrid may not be making much difference at all to your impact. If you happen to be well off you can furnish yourself with a Tesla, which is pretty spiffy, but otherwise electric cars by and large seem as though they were designed by the Early Learning Centre.
Overall though I would like for the discussion to become less antagonistic on both sides.
If you are genuinely foolish enough to believe that cars and all these lovely trappings of modern life aren’t having an impact, or it doesn’t matter, then please go to your nearest library. If books don’t work for you there’s always Al Gore’s film (though if you can take ninety minutes of that man’s voice I salute you). Denying it is just being a bit of an idiot. Worse still is if you choose not to care. I’m all for being selfish in several areas of life, but no-one owned the place to begin with so the responsibility for looking after it is everyones.
Equally though denying the difficulties of changing the way we live is just as stupid. People need to get to work on time; mortgages need paying (I’m no great fan of the mass lust for home ownership, but nor indeed would you voluntarily catch me in a tent or caravan), commercial agriculture means food isn’t free unless you fancy your chances with berry and fungi identification (and I assure you not all gardens are blessed with soil that actually grows anything) . So many other parts of modern life rely on people using the available technology and machinery. Simplification may well work for some, but there’s many who’d be acutely miserable without their modern life.
Lots of stuff needs to change, but collaboratively and not so bloody antagonistically.
Woo! Go you! (totally forgot it was Blog Action Day – hence why yesterday’s post was a load of drivel along the usual lines).