Time Will Tell

So the Climate Camp at Heathrow gets started today. Already the BBC forums are awash with mindless dolts preparing to set sail for the end of the world on a raft of assumptions, such as:
"Perhaps if these soap dodging hippies worked for a living they would then understand why people need to go on holiday and therefore want to fly to a hot country" says Simon from Swindon. I personally never saw the necessity of flying to a hot country for a holiday because I'd quite happily take the train, car, bus, ferry or ship to get there, and hot is overrated at the best of times, of course that still harms the environment, but at only a tiny fraction of the extent that is caused by aircraft. The assumptions that people who protest against environmental abuse don't wash or work is based on no empirical evidence whatsoever and of course it begs a wider question too. We don't after all, aspire to the same lifestyle expectations uniformly, and why should we?

This myth, that everybody can have an affluent western lifestyle (a la friends) is entirely bogus; not least because we would need the material resources of some 8 planets to bankroll it, but also because it makes another assumption: namely that we're all motivated by money and that is the be all and end all of life.

How revoltingly decadent and prosaic.

On the one hand, this kind of deep ignorance is extremely disheartening. But it smacks of 1950s attitudes towards ethnic populations and a woman's place in the home, or 1970s attitudes towards drink driving. This is the only reason why I take heart in the struggle, because people will be forced to change; and these eco-rednecks will take it hard for sure, and that probably serves them right; but they'll get in line eventually, because they'll have no choice.

For that reason the last laugh will be on them.

In the meantime, the struggle continues, against greed, materialism and ignorance, all of which underpin the green debate as much as they did apartheid and do Iraq. Our governments are as guilty as the polluters themselves since they encourage us to change lightbulbs while giving the 'green light' (no pun intended) to BAA to build more runways. Their so called targets for emissions are so broad that a 747 could fly through them with room to spare and they will do almost nothing to solve the problems that are on the horizon. So what if industry is told that it must reduce the net UK carbon account by at least 60 per cent from the 1990 baseline by 2050; ironically even the government are questioning the effectiveness of their own targets, and you can bet your bottom dollar that nobody will even make a start on changing their practices until 2049.

To call it a joke does a deep disservice to jokes, but I have a feeling that it's the green lobby who'll be laughing loudest - albeit with a tinge of disbelief that it took so long - come the day.