Sustainability

One Sunday several months ago, I was sitting in the courtyard of a lovely little café in Durham called Vennels, eating lunch with various Quakers (as is something of a tradition among the younger – middle-aged people in Durham Meeting) and setting the world to rights (ditto).

F was telling us about how her daughter had spent part of her year abroad in a small town in Oregon where they had taken it upon themselves to live more sustainably and in greater community with each other. Residents could sign up to teach hour-long classes at a community centre for free in anything from knitting to accounting, and consequently share skills which might otherwise have been inaccessible. The council would come and dig a vegetable patch in your garden for free, even planting vegetables for you with the idea that once you had learned to grow and garden home-produce, you could help someone else the next year. I can’t remember any more examples off-hand and possibly they weren’t given – but what had really struck F’s daughter (and consequently F) was the degree to which these people had taken their own initiative. They hadn’t waited for someone to tell them what to do. They hadn’t been pressured into anything and they certainly hadn’t waited for the government to enforce regulations upon them. They had simply seen a problem and together started to work out a solution that would benefit everybody through give-and-take.

There have been various posts from various people recently on what our future holds for us, notably Jenny’s Apocalype or Liberal Democracy 2.0? and Dickie’s Crossroads. As Jenny says, I think the consensus is that the world cannot continue in its current way, and that sooner or later, all too possibly sooner, something is going to have to give. The Transition Towns movement, as I linked to in the comments of the above post, is a movement that is trying to prepare Britain for the time when Peak Oil runs out. Dickie’s argument that sustainability and climate change are two completely different issues is a slightly invidious one in my opinion, but I do think that he is right that the latter is focused on too much to the detriment of the former.

The problem is, is that we’re all waiting around for somebody to tell us what to do about it. We know that it’s happening, yes, and we’ll switch off our lightbulbs and recycle our newspapers like nobody’s business – and then go and sit down at our computers while the washing machine whirrs and sockets give out energy to appliances on standby. We tut at the sheer amount ending up in landfill, but yet we still buy more new stuff because we feel like having a new phone or a different outfit for the evening. I’m not saying that I’m any better here, incidentally, but it’s something I’m trying to be conscious of and something that I think that a lot of people don’t really appreciate – that sustainability is for life, not just for Christmas, so to speak, and that we’re all waiting for someone else to take the lead.

Some of you may have noticed the new icon just below the calendar on the right of my blog. It links you to the 10:10 campaign, a campaign which aims for its members to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010. And it’s not just about car fuel – it’s about food, it’s about consumer habits, it’s about household energy use, and it’s about promoting a lifestyle which takes notice of the world and the resources around us. Individuals and big businesses need to play their part.

It’s hard, yes. In technological terms we might feel like we’re regressing, yes. But surely we can’t have it both ways? If that technology is contributing to our world’s downfall, we may have to choose between the privilege of using it now and the privilege of living in a society with enough resources to support itself to a basic level in however many years time. Personally I know which one I’d choose in the long run, even if delayed gratification is not intrinsic to our natures.

And maybe everything will sort itself out, and our saving grace will appear, and God will come down from the heavens to keep us happy and rich and safe. We’re so convinced that it couldn’t happen to us that we shut our eyes on the fact that for many parts of the world, it’s already happened to them and they’re already dealing with the consequences. Let’s take our lead from that town in Oregon, shall we, and take some immediate responsibility?

Apathy and Activism

I wasn’t glued to the TV or the internet at 9pm on Sunday night, waiting for the news of the European Elections to start trickling through. In fact I waiting for that exact news – but I was standing at the edge of a hall in Pity Me, Durham, with a green rosette on my chest and hand in hand with J, the Lib Dem contingent behind us and the BNPs in front of us. Seated at the tables in a horseshoe were dozens of exhausted council workers and in the middle were 116,213 votes exactly, each one sorted, checked, counted, checked, and finally tied in a bundle of 100 to be placed on the appropriate pile. Our job as party representatives had been to scrutinise the counting process, flagging up any votes that had been placed incorrectly through malpractice or, as was much more likely to be the case given the sheer numbers involved, through human error.

Durham did not have any council seats up for election, due to the restructuring into a unitary authority that happened one year (two years?) ago. Our three European seats went to Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem, once each. The Labour count was much higher than I expected – it’ll have certainly been higher than the national average, I assume – but even that was down on normal when you consider that much of the North East of England has never even considered voting for anyone else.

I have nothing to add on the subject of the BNP, UKIP, and the increasingly far-right tendencies of the Tories to what has already been said over at Jenny’s blog. The hard fact is that every seat that the far right have gained, both in Britain and across Europe, is as a result of people voting for them, and not enough people voting in order to counteract the effect.

But this leads me on to Jenny’s question. What’s done is done, but what the hell can we do about all this now?

I suppose on a grass roots level it’s about motivating interest in politics, and trying to get informed debate going so that people know what they’re voting for (and why they’re voting for).

The next level up from that is getting involved in either activism or actual politics. I am not a member of the Green Party – J and I were there on invitation to help out a party member who we know from Quaker Meeting – but discussing the statistics and tactics, and feeling part of the whole electoral process has at least temporarily fired up my enthusiasm for getting involved properly. The system is undoubtedly flawed, yes. I had a pang of sympathy for the 400-odd ballot papers that were discounted for having ‘FUCK YOU ALL’ or ‘NOT FIT FOR GOVERNMENT’ scrawled across them – but the fact is that this is the system in which we presently have to work. Are we going to stand aside in protest at a system and let those manipulative people who have no such qualms take it over while we sit around debating the respective merits of various democracies, and wondering why things are getting really shit?

[And here I intend(ed) to go into a political discussion of a rather more philopsophical bent. It may yet happen. Stay tuned. But time slips on, and if I don't publish at least this first entry soon then it will be lost to the nether regions of my 'Draft' pile forever! It's been sat there a good few days already.]

4th June

This is a post which is hopefully preaching to the converted, but a reminder and a plea nonetheless to get out and vote today if you can. Vote for anyone. Vote if nothing else to keep the BNP out of the European Parliament – this one’s proportional representation per region, which is more likely to give an edge to small parties. Spoil your ballot paper if you don’t care or don’t trust any of ‘em. Vote postally at home, or in person away, but vote, vote, have your say, stand up against the über-right-wing minority who are threatening policies of racism and hatred, make your voice heard!

Oh, and remember: this is a European Election for most of us, in addition to a local council election for some. Therefore if you’re not electing a new MP for whatever reason, it has really very little to do with Gordon Brown. Yeh? Good.

Fees Petition

Someone invited me to this Facebook group, which contains a link to a petition here concerning the potential removal of a cap on university tuition fees.

I’m not going to write a big rant here or now, but suffice to say that although I have not joined the Facebook group, I immediately went and signed the government petition. Yes, the higher education funding system is desperately in need of a review, but it would be simplistic and short-sighted to imply that raised (and variable) fees will solve the problem. Such a measure would only serve to exacerbate the class divide in this country whilst overlooking the rather more pressing issues in higher education and just trying to blindly throw cash in the hope that some of it might end up in the right places.

*sigh*

Contention

There was a DSU (Durham Student Union) council meeting on Thursday at which the Environment and Ethics Officer proposed a thoroughly contentious motion – to boycott Israeli goods and majority-state-owned Israeli companies from the union premises as a protest against Israel’s human rights record, both in the recent disproportionately violent treatment of Gaza and in its treatment of conscientious objectors.

For those interested, the meeting’s documents can be found here, under the heading of ‘Thursday 22nd January’. The motion itself is contained within the Agenda file.

It was a long meeting and by the time that the union buildings had to be closed at 11:30pm, no consensus had been reached – a sufficient number of council reps had had to leave to catch buses that a vote would be meaningless. Quite what happens remains to be seen. There are calls for a university-wide referendum. There are calls for the motion to be kicked into the ground and ignored. Despite the best efforts of the DSU Exec to maintain a rational, measured discussion, it was inevitable that feelings were going to be running high, and one group of students in particular did themselves no credit by taking the discussion to a highly emotive and personal level.

There are arguments for, arguments against, and arguments why it should never have been brought up in the first place. Part of the problem is the general level of ignorance surrounding the exact technicalities of international and national human rights law, and while I hold up my hand there with most people, I’m afraid, it does not make for a productive discussion.

Those of you who know me and know my political views will probably know which side of the motion I supported – and here I would like to point out to any Facebook stalkers who have put two and two together that I would have held that opinion regardless of any personal ties or vested interests. As I wrote in an email to my college representative,

“This is not anti-Semetic. This is anti the abuse of basic human rights. Whether or not you agree with the Jewish cause for land, and whether or not you agree with national service this is about the freedom for innocent civilians to go about their lives in peace, and the freedom to stand up for one’s beliefs. If the latter in particular is not what a union should stand for and support, then I don’t know what is.”

Listening to this only reinforces my conviction (as well as being sheer genius on the part of Tony Benn :D)

I realise that even publishing this blog entry is risky in terms of the potential offence caused to readers. I have heard arguments going back and forth on the topic already. I’m happy to debate, and everything, but I suppose I didn’t post this to go over the pros and the cons of a boycott motion. I posted it as a reminder that sticking up for your beliefs is neither easy nor always black-and-white, but still fundamentally important if we dare to hope that the world can ever be a better place. Sometimes you just need to stand up and be counted.

America

Yes! Yes!

Yes!