"Today is just another Friday in August. Drowsy and close. Office workers' minds are fixed on the weekend, clock-watching, waiting perhaps for a holiday if your finances have escaped the credit crunch and rising food and fuel prices. In the evening, trains will be littered with abandoned newspaper sports pages, all pretending interest in the football transfers. For once it seems justified to repeat TS Eliot's famous lines: "This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper."
Andrew Sims, New Economic Foundation, writing in the Guardian
(Today I felt like a child who has woken up from a nightmare, except that it's a waking dream and it's continuing. There is almost no one who understands the situation; there's little comfort to be had; it's crouching in the shadows every minute; I'm powerless.)
100 months
from the same article: "But does it have to be this way? Must we curdle in our complacency and allow our cynicism about politicians to give them an easy ride as they fail to act in our, the national and the planet's best interest? There is now a different clock to watch than the one on the office wall. Contrary to being a counsel of despair, it tells us that everything we do from now matters. And, possibly more so than at any other time in recent history."
There's little comfort in that, because most of the people are like the politicians: no one seems to want to know.
get ready for 4 degrees
2 comments:
I don't understand your panic, that sometimes smacks of moralising to be quite honest.
The world (and the UK esp, so it would seem) is at present in a state of political, financial and environmental flux. So what? It's the environmental that gets you the most, I detect, but if you don't have kids and their futures to worry about - surely it's not something to keep you awake at night, is it? As is repeated constantly just almost everywhere, planet earth will continue for millenia - just not in a way that suits humanity's present needs. The planet will be just fine. It's like language change. The English Language will survive and look after itself so there's little point going off on one about blips and debasements.
The only thing to do in the face of the big and nasty evils - institutionally sustained poverty and environmental destruction - is to shore up (sure up?) one's own personal happiness and reserves of joy. Maybe go to a rally or sign petitions if you are the protesting kind, but really, there's nothing to be gained from hand-wringing!!
Sure, the human race is wrecking the planet, but be happy within yourself! xxxx
I agree to a large extent, and Lovelock certainly would! But I am the protesting kind... see my latest post. I really think there is more to be gained than we've imagined for a long time.
You're right about the environment, of course. Probably little to be done. But plenty of reason to think outside the box. That's all I can do, I reckon - wouldn't cut it as a farmer or a carpenter
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