Take Some Action – Save The Planet – Really.

It has taken me a few years to get my thinking together around this environmental – pollution – save the planet issue, but I think I’ve finally nailed it. It’s all about micro action, and it’s these that will solve many of the problems we are facing.

Wherever we look on this tiny planet of ours we can see problems, quite serious problems with the environment overall, with very serious problems around pollution and capitalism and a whole load of other subjects of course including politics.

On the face of it these problems are fairly complex, but without a doubt are interlinked.

As humans,  as a species seem to be the only ones that are capable of causing mass destruction to our own environment and we do that in the name of progress. Certainly, if you look at things over the last 100 or 200 years we have seen great progress made. Healthcare is keeping people alive for longer than ever and we have the infrastructure that allows us to travel and move around the planet with a certain degree of freedom. All of these things are fantastic for us and should provide us with as much happiness as we need.

The downside of course is that all of these things that and all of the conveniences they bring   – they also include a degree of pollution and upset for the ecosystems within our tiny blue planet. Reality is, one flight here or one city pumping chemicals into the sea – wouldn’t really make much of difference in the scheme of things. Multiply that by many tens of thousands and very quickly things start to go wrong – and indeed they have. Question is, how do we start to reverse the damage done and preserve what’s left.

I’m not saying it’s going to be possible to be able to reverse all of the problems we have caused, well not in the short term future. But I am saying that us humans have a responsibility to start the process of correcting the harm that we have done. Sure that possibly means that we need to start living our lives in a slightly different way, we need to start to consume less and recycle one hell of a lot more. We also need to reduce the amount we throw away and to become a lot more mindful of the changes we have caused to our only home.

I get the fact that there will be a lot of people living in third world countries that want the change that we in the west have benefited from. The problem is,  can we afford to have a planet with a further billion people that are driving cars that are living in brick-built houses that are consuming electricity and gas and causing more and more problems to the environment. One answer to that is no we can’t afford it. Something is going to crash burn – handing back to nature a knackered planet.

Yet we have technology solutions that will allow everybody to benefit from cleaner and greener energy. 20 years ago everybody was laughing at electric cars saying the technology just wasn’t going to be there and there are Mr and Mrs Smith from Acacia avenue I driving an electric car. Change can happen and can happen quite quickly.

What does this mean in practice? In simple terms we need to make sure that every individual on the planet starts to take responsibility for their own actions. Tiny changes x millions of actions means that massive things can happen. If everybody took responsibility for cleaning up their local area even by picking up litter there would be a massive change the place would start to look and feel very different.

With that in mind here is the call to action for us individuals that actually want to start to create the change that is needed.

We can’t rely on everybody to accept the things they need to do. It just isn’t going to happen like that, there is no way that the entire planet is going to get behind a movement of taking responsibility. So what is needed is a few hardcore people,  if you like early entrants to the game that slowly starts a move in the right direction. That means for you and me.

Here’s How We Do It.

We go out on a Saturday morning and do some litter picking. We pop over to the local park on a Friday evening before we go to the pub and we clean up where we find mess. We are the shoppers in Tesco’s that unwrap all of our plastic shopping and leave the debris on the till for them to recycle.  Sure it’s going to feel awkward at first but change often is.

We will also be the people to start the social media push in order to make sure that the larger retailers,  those that are forcing us to consume in a certain way are reminded that there is only one planet that we can’t continue to use up all of the resources and then let the by-products  pollute our rivers and our seas, or to fill up landfill with the shit and detritus that we’ve created.

Some of the stuff that we use, for example plastic wrappers do not break down in the environment for centuries which means we are leaving a legacy for our children’s grandchildren a planet that will be virtually unusable and certainly won’t be serving them well.

That’s assuming of course there will be a planet left it’s likely given the amount of animal die backs we are seeing there is a good chance that the human species will not survive. Personally I think that’s probably a good thing for the planet, sure some of you will disagree.

But that’s for another day.

Meanwhile, I urge you to start to put into practice some of these things you now know, things that now make sense. That’s you taking responsibility for your own detritus and mess and helping to make the changes in your local area you. Then starting  to use social media and campaigning in order to encourage retailers and manufacturers to do the right thing and at the same time helping persuade others to come and join you and me and start to make a difference.

I don’t want you getting all evangelical about this, I don’t want you being all push. What I want you to do is to pull people towards you, people that want to help, people that want to see a difference on this planet of ours. We need to pull as many people as possible into our thinking, and that’s not some kind of hippy, happy place it’s just based on the truth that is in front of us.

If we keep shitting in our own back garden at some point the level of shit will be over the back door and we won’t be able to use it. A tipping point, I want the tipping point to be here and now.

There is no reason why you and I –  just the two of us can’t go and create that tipping point. the capitalist system has served us well,  it’s given us great developments and technology allowing us to share our story, our vision and our tipping point with the world.

The problem with capitalism is it consumes as evidenced by the state of the planet.  You and I need to apply pressure and to create a movement that will eventually start to make the planet a little better for all of us. Of course you can ignore this and hope it goes away, it may make you feel better for now – a few years down the road, when you can longer breathe the air in London, when the rivers fill with plastic, when the local beach has no wildlife you can look back at your own life and know you did nothing about it. Good luck, you gotta be some kind of freak if you think that is an acceptable way of living your life.

I am a practical optimist, also known as a realist and I can assure you this problem isn’t going to go away on it’s own, but we can change it  – by taking some very small measures, a little effort. It is up to us to take some action key is will you?