The Insanity of Humanity
I’m currently watching ‘Beyond The Flood’. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio and focuses on the devastation being caused by climate change. For today, 30th October, it’s free on a ton of different devices and on YouTube. My advice is to watch it.
It’s shocking, heartbreaking and disgusting. I don’t know what to think about humanity. It honestly leaves me with a feeling of revulsion that we knowingly continue to use sources of energy that are destroying the planet at an alarming rate. It’s beyond criminal.
I just saw this statistic. 50% of the oceans coral reefs have been destroyed in the last 30 years. 80% of the tropical forests in Indonesia have been burned and cleared so that corporations can grow palm trees to provide palm oil in most of our products, both food and cleaning.
I feel helpless and enraged at the same time. I studied Politics at University. I wanted to go into it when I left but I saw it as futile. I didn’t want to be a Yes man in the Conservative or Labour Party and I believed the party I believed in – The Green Party – was so far from ever making an impact that it was pointless. Instead, I thought I’d get into personal development – a field I love. I thought I’d become successful in that and then, using my profile, I’d be able to transition into Politics and have an impact. Writing that seems laughable. What impact am I really having?
Anyway, there are some small measures we can all take to make a difference. It’s unlikely governments are going to take a lead on climate change because they’re in the pocket of big business. Ruthless scumbag industrialist like the Koch brothers in the USA (who really should go down in history alongside Hitler and Stalin) own a large portion of the fossil fuel industry and lobby government to make sure no measures are taken that would harm their interests and promote the protection of the environment. Therefore, it’s up to us to make a change. Here’s what I do (and I’m very very far from perfect).
Positives:
Buy mainly organic food
Observe meat free Monday
Limit my beef consumption to only one meal a week
Use a green electricity supplier (Ecotricity)
Didn’t fly at all in 2015
Refuse to buy shares and invest in companies that are unethical (which means virtually all of them)
Don’t work for unethical companies
Negatives and things to be improved:
Flew twice in 2016
Still eat way too much meat
Drive a petrol car
Have way too many hygiene, toiletries, cleaning and food products containing palm oil
My banking is done with HSBC
Rant over!
(image taken from Jan Smith photostream flickr.com)
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