Here comes the flood

I am, and have been for a few weeks now, on top of my recycling. Although I consider this a significant personal triumph, this has simply involved me taking a carrier bag of stuff with me when I walk up to Booths, two or three times a week. 

One consequence of this his been the ability to move around my small kitchen without the risk of triggering an avalanche of plastics, cardboard and glass bottles. Another has been that I'm no longer having to face a daily reminder of just how much I buy and use. 

Similarly, during the winter, I get through a bag or two of logs a week, and a similar amount of coal. It doesn't seem that much, although if I bought it all in advance, say six months' worth, I guess it would fill the cottage's garden.

Up near Hutton Roof is this woodyard in the photo, and this gives you some idea of the demands we make on resources when you add us all together. I don't know how many woodyards like this there are in the UK, or how quickly they get through all their stock, but it still makes me feel a bit remorseful.

We use so much, and throw so much away, that I wonder - as I'm sure many other people do - where it will all end. Despite all the people who voted Green, we have just the one Green MP. Our emission targets don't seem to mean much and I saw one recently that talked about achieving a target by 2100, basically pushing the issue back by two or three generations.

With business driven by achieving profit for shareholders, the looming prospect of TTIP, a right-wing press, and a public apathy towards what seems to be accepted as an inevitable environmental disaster somewhere down the line, I guess nothing will be done until the environmental problems manifest themselves. And then everyone will ask why nothing was done about it sooner.

Our main hope might be that the problems that are manifesting themselves in Florida cause some action to be taken: the American people might tolerate (or be indifferent to) flooding in third world countries but a natural disaster closer to home might well force the government's hand, at which point I reckon they'd start insisting that other countries act more responsibly, too. For now, though, environment officers in Florida aren't even allowed to talk about global warming (see here). They can bury their heads in the sand for now, but very soon that sand will be under water!