A rallying cry!

Fed up with our ‘leaders’ ignoring the desperate state of the planet? Pretending that everything’s ok while half the world is starving and our environment’s falling apart?
Well, you’re not the only one.

We need to take really radical steps now to avoid imminent disasters of many kinds. Buying ‘greener’ cars and recycling newspapers doesn’t come close, so why aren’t we being told the truth?

It’s the job of local and world leaders to take the long view, to take the tough decisions and help us create a safe and healthy world. That’s what they’re paid to do, isn’t it? Instead, we’ve over-fished our seas, cut down our forests, caused soil erosion on a massive scale and polluted the air and water we need. We’ve used up half our oil and coal and killed off nearly a quarter of all the world’s species. And all for what? Short-term gain for the richest countries. And there are now 6,700 million of us – twice as many as there were just 40 years ago. The planet can’t cope and it’s on the point of collapse.

So just what have these people been doing? Do they bother to educate themselves at all about what’s going on? Or perhaps they really do only care about their pensions and nothing else.

We’re being told about recessions, rising food and oil prices, climate change and the steady loss of bio-diversity, but, oddly, our government, religious groups and media all shy away from joining the dots and giving us the big picture.

Peak-Oil can only mean Peak-Population too. That’s because feeding us all has only been possible by using vast amounts of fossil fuels - for machinery, fertilizers, transport, processing, storage, etc. There is simply no time to replace fossil fuel with alternative energy sources and millions of people are suffering and dying already. The world population has to fall again to sustainable levels – sadly, worryingly, that almost certainly means widespread famine and war. Even if we could replace fossil fuels in time, our ecosystems are collapsing everywhere – forests, fisheries, reefs, agricultural land, honeybees, etc. etc..

You know all this, and you’re doing your best to make changes - we all are - but it won’t be enough without real leadership too. Disasters are unfolding everyday around the world, yet our politicians are on holiday most of the time, our newspapers think celebrity and fashion are more important, and the religious say ‘don’t worry, there’s a spare world waiting after you die’.

I think we deserve better than this, and certainly our children do. It’s not good enough to expect those of us who have taken the trouble to understand the problems to then go and try to educate everyone else. Our governments have hundreds of paid advisors. (Paid by us, of course.) And thousands of paid administrators. They have paid committees deciding policies and strategies. They have press departments, think-tanks and massive budgets. Yet the best they can come up with is a levy on plastic bags?!

Are they stupid, or do they just think we are?

It’s true that we in Ireland are extremely fortunate to live where we do with our wealth of natural resources. But don’t be fooled – very soon we’ll be caught up in the global maelstrom too. If we’re very lucky we might only have to suffer food and fuel shortages, high unemployment and much lower standards of living, whereas the people in 37 countries are already fighting over food..

This was all predictable and avoidable. It’s obvious that unrestrained growth in anything, including population, is unsustainable. But it’s hardly surprising we’re in this situation because all we’ve ever been taught is that growth is good, that the world’s resources are for using up as fast as we can, and that we’re the most important species on the planet. That’s all nonsense – dangerous, stupid, selfish nonsense.

In fact we’re one species amongst millions – no more important than any other. We’ve temporarily become very powerful and numerous, but that can’t last. We’re messing with incredibly sophisticated and fragile ecosystems and they’re breaking.

In this bizarre society we’ve made, bankers and barristers are valued more highly than beekeepers or foresters. Five-year-old school-children are taught theological fantasies instead of how they fit into their delicate and intricate natural world. We think it’s ok to go shopping in New York, commute hundreds of miles to work, buy strawberries in December, or to cover our precious soil with housing estates and tarmac. Big business is more important than bio-diversity and profits are king.

This is madness and it will all end in tears.

Sooner or later we will have to learn to live in harmony with our environment – not because it’s ‘green’ or ‘cool’ or ‘the right thing to do’ – but because it’s the only way to live sustainably. We can get away with abusing our environment for only so long, then we starve. It’s as simple as that.

Our leaders should have helped us avoid all this, and failing that, should be helping us now to prepare for the challenging times ahead: teaching our children useful skills, setting up sustainable infrastructures and reminding us that our environment is by far our most important and fragile resource.

Instead, unbelievably, they urge us to continue buying, making, consuming stuff. They spend our taxes building airports and motorways when plainly they wont be needed soon. They sanction the worst kind of farming, forestry and building, and oversee an education system that simply fails to teach the most important things in life.

It would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.
Many people argue that we’ve left it too late to avert disaster here and abroad, that only the bullies and the rich will survive to inherit a depleted and ravaged world. But what if there was still time? What if we told our leaders to lead or get out of the way? What if we took stock of the big picture and really acted on it?
If there’s any chance at all we really will have to take huge and un-precedented steps. Just as in a war, we are in a state of emergency that calls for enormous effort from everyone.

What can we do? What would really change things around? What would bring us back into a healthy relationship with the natural world?

Population here and around the world is the crucial element, so capping our population here while we work out what’s sustainable is the first step; use only renewable energy; re-write our school curriculum; grow food and fuel locally; abolish unsustainable growth and all waste; manage our fish-stocks; replant our forests; rethink our transport systems completely…. In short, put the environment first and live within limits.*

Is that really so bad? Is that too much to ask?

Of course not! We can do these things and we must do them. Perhaps we can only influence other countries – but we can really change this one. We can make a truly sustainable country, and show the rest of the world how to do it.

Just imagine what we could achieve: roads with buses and bicycles on them (and even people walking!); trains and canals linking cities and towns: children learning how to grow and cook good food, everyone working at home or within a few miles, etc. etc. And all around a country in recovery – expanding forests that grow our fuel and materials, healthy fields full of fruit and vegetables, rivers and seas full of fish instead of rubbish and pollutants..

A naïve Utopian dream? Well, what’s wrong with that?! As the song goes “If you haven’t got a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?”.

Let’s not forget, the alternative is a scary descent into violence and anarchy, with people scrabbling for survival in a world where everything has to be either edible or burnable. There are hundreds of examples throughout history of this, as well as plenty of current ones, too.

So let’s choose a positive future. Get involved in the greatest movement of your life. There is nothing more important.

Let’s lobby politicians and other leaders, telling them what’s needed and why. And keep telling them till they act.

*(interestingly, all these things will come about anyway, whether we like it or not. But it will be much less painful if we choose them..)


Things you can do right now:

Copy this pamphlet and pass it on to everyone you know. Today.
Email to thebiggerpicture08@gmail.com so we can keep everyone informed. We can also send you a .pdf of this in pamphlet form so you can print it at home.
Respond to this post and share your views.
Donate a little something. (Please! We could do with some cash..)
Be prepared to rally to the cause – we will be campaigning and writing to politicians and other leaders, but they’re scared and wont listen unless they’re told often enough.

We cannot afford to fail – we have to make them act. PLEASE JOIN IN.

The Bigger Picture, Bantry, Co.Cork

Welcome

The Bigger Picture is a pressure/lobby group for people who want to really make a difference in Ireland.
This is where you get to help choose the most important issues and people we're going to target with our campaigns.