News from 'The Renewable Way' - Spring 2010

Sustainable government

As I write this short review early in May 2010, Britain has just had an election where no party could claim a victory despite our Victorian ‘first past the post’ system of selecting Members of Parliament, which is supposed to have the one main virtue of producing a clear result. During the election campaign politicians had to concede and many more people have began to wake-up to the extent of a financial crisis that could take years if not a generation to remedy. To add to the discomfort, ash from a volcanic eruption in Iceland (see picture left) has caused airports across Europe to be closed, so it is even difficult to fly away from the local problems. In the Gulf of Mexico a rig (run by BP) has suffered major damage and the escaping crude oil is affecting the local economy of some States in a country (the USA) where many prominent people have dismissed the argument that human actions are having an appreciable adverse environment effect. To cap it all, the weather, the default conversation item in Britain when other options fail, is cold and damp. Thus, if ever the promise of spring was needed, it is now and in the weeks ahead.

To achieve a truly sustainable situation we need to appreciate how it came about that politicians and the financial community confused money, which is a human tool, with what we use it to exchange with one another, which is the energy that we convert to give us sustenance (food and drink), comfort (heating and cooling) and to realise our imagination (through economic activity and entertainment). We also need to recognise that the way that the human population has expanded so rapidly (from one to seven billion in approximately one century) is the basis of the misconception that there is an immigration problem in this country and also the reason why we need to see our future as a global problem that will almost certainly require a greater degree of co-operation between all people than is needed currently by our national politicians and the population of counties, like Greece, that are experiencing worse symptoms of the financial situation than we have so far.

If you believe that humanity is made up of groups of people who can never be reconciled and are destined to compete, then I understand why you might despair. But the truth is that we are one part of a greater whole from which we can never be separated and the energy that sustains everything can never be destroyed or created but just changes its form: through us but also in spite of us. Thus there is always sustainability even if local efforts to address it have to stumble and almost collapse before some sort of agreement on the future can emerge, as has happened within Sustainable Staffordshire over recent months. The big question for us all is: are we prepared to seek to live within it and work to achieve this goal?

I wish you all fine days and the imagination to grasp the opportunities and fun that I hope will come your way now and in the future.

Paul Newman

May 2010