Yesterday about 300 truck drivers drove slowly along a number of main routes into London in order to protest against the rising cost of diesel fuel. The price of diesel has risen so much in recent months that it is now more expensive than petrol. Car drivers are also not happy because car tax is also rising this year and next year and in some cases to almost double the current charge.
The main government reasoning behind these rises is an attempt to change driving behaviour in order to reduce individual car use so that the United Kingdom can meet it’s carbon reduction agreement. When these policies were being discussed a few months ago the reaction from the general population was low key to say the least. People agreed that in order to be Green something needed to be done and discouraging car use would be a reasonable way of achieving this.
In the mean time a number of issues have overtaken these policies for example the rising price of oil on the international markets, the rising cost of basic food stuffs and the knock-on from the US sub-prime mortgage collapse. The net result of these problems is rising household prices and the net result of this is families cutting back on ‘luxury items’.
One item that has suddenly become a luxury is the concept of becoming ‘green’ or changing lifestyles to make them and life on Earth more sustainable. Suddenly car ownership has become a human right and any government that has the audacity to try and reduce car use is suddenly the enemy of the people. When it comes to being green it seems that all people want to do is get a bag for life and do a bit of recycling. When it comes to taking real action the general public and businesses want someone else to sort out the big issues such as global warming.
Most people want to continue their current lifestyle i.e. meat every day, personal car ownership, driving the kids to school, flying abroad, buying consumer goods that are imported from distant countries etc. etc. but also want a healthy amount of wildlife, continuing frozen wastes in the north and south poles and protection for the Amazon rain forests.
These objectives are increasingly at odds with each other but due to the intransigence of most people we find ourselves increasingly in a Mexican standoff with wildlife and the natural environment. The winner of the blink first contest will inevitably be the natural environment. As seen in China and Burma recently growing populations building homes in low lying coastal regions and earthquake zones will always lose out. Governments will find it difficult to fund re-building projects due to the rising cost and scarcity of raw materials.
What’s to be done? The answer is not a simple one and certainly there is not one simple answer. Certainly many people would find the amount of change unpalatable, the concept of giving things up is hard enough but to give up 70%+ of one’s current lifestyle would be anathema to most people. The next 50 years are going to be interesting and will likely be characterised by increasing civil unrest, large migrations of people across continents, war, food shortages, medical emergencies and natural disasters that start to seriously impact on populations. Maybe in 100 years a greatly reduced human population will be able to live the kind of lifestyle that we all want.
