Are We To Eat or Heat?

Dear Reader,

Well, in the past two years we have experienced COVID and are still trying to find out how to live with it as it continues to mutate, and now we have another war at hand - virtually on the UK's doorstep - in the Ukraine. This war has sparked off a crisis in two major economic respects - the supply of energy forms (gas and oil) and the supply of wheat and other foodstuffs.

The effect of the foregoing issues - and the already existing effects of the Climate Change situation - has precipitated an enormous increase in the cost of living, not only in foodstuffs but also, and particularly, the cost of energy.

We all know that the situation for many has got to the point of having to choose between eating or heating.

The UK prime minister has gone so far as to admit that poorer people in the UK may have to choose between buying food to keep the body alive or energy to keep warm. This has come after the prime minister announced what the government's energy strategy would be over the next few years, where atomic energy has suddenly come into the spotlight once more and fracking is being re-examined.

What is going on here? Before the last two years, atomic energy and (particularly) fracking looked as though they had fallen down the 'must have' list in the face of wonderful challenges by environmentalists and others. There has long been concern about atomic waste disposal and (of course) the 'Chernobyl fear', and fracking has almost certainly induced unsafe ground instability where trials have taken place. 

On top of that, the government has ignored looking at the proper insulation of poorer homes as a way of reducing their heating needs, which would more likely enable those people to both eat and heat. 

It is fairly clear that there are ulterior reasons for the government taking the strategy it has. Firstly, developing new power stations would be good (they say) for the economy by retaining skills in that sector that may be exportable. They also more easily enable us to retain our nuclear capability in weaponry. This is all despite the fact that when the immediately planned new nuclear plants are opened they will still only provide 15% of the UK's energy consumption needs. In the much longer-term (2050 or beyond) it might rise to 25% as further new plants are opened.

But they prefer to do this rather than invest in (freely available) solar energy.

These are hardly good criteria to cause the construction of potentially quite harmful power stations. And this is all because the base criteria that has been taken as the cause of Climate Change is the CO2 level, and because of the realisation that no country can now rely on the supply of energy from an external source, like Russia.

Amidst all this is the pressure being exerted by large business corporations for their interests to be protected. Their end-game, as it always has been, is profit for themselves no matter what the cost is and so long as it's legal. Law, as we know, however, can be a dicey topic. Accountants are paid to be clever in how they manipulate the law and big companies will throw large sums of money at protecting their interests in court.

And so we come to the subject of family farmers, who do us a big favour. Across Europe, their way of farming challenges the destructive ways of agri-giants. By planting different types of crops, taking care of the soil and planting more trees, family farmers grow healthier food while living in harmony with nature.

The EU was going to announce a new law that would protect their way of growing food that doesn’t destroy nature. Even though this law only affects the EU, laws like this can influence farming in the UK and beyond Europe.

But the agri-giant lobby fought hard to stop it, using the war in Ukraine as an excuse. With wheat and corn less available, they argued for a U-turn on the new law. All to protect their billions in profits and get their hands on the land this law wants to protect, like forests and wetlands.

Agri-giants want to get their hands on land that would otherwise be set aside for farming in harmony with nature. But this is not how the big companies work. They want to use this land to produce more food for more profits, using industrial methods, artificial fertilisers and chemical pesticides. This has the extreme effect of risking our health and causing a death sentence for forests, bees and birds.

The most outrageous part is that they will use that protected land to grow food to feed animals. They are drumming up fear about food shortages to justify land grabbing for food that is not even going to land on our plates!

So, what is the solution? The drive for true sustainability goes on while the governments of the world's richest countries have chosen their own interpretation of sustainability to mean purely the reduction of CO2. Hence the choice taken to manufacture electric cars even whilst the material to make batteries is from a non-reusable source. It also assumes that the western economies are going to remain buoyant enough for people to afford such cars - let alone the economies of less rich countries.

This is while the UK national transport infrastructure remains, for many, too expensive and unreliable. Will bicycles make a popular return?

For ordinary people we still have the option in the UK to protest, either personally and physically or through the medium of petitions, which are remarkably successful. But these methods have to be raised piecemeal - there's no real challenge to the overall decision-making that takes place on our behalf except through the ballot box.

There is a greater way to protest and that is - for those that can - to change our lifestyle. The "those that can' category are really those who drive the materialist, consumer, economy. However, that can mean just those who spend their money on things like mobile phones and related gadgetry, not necessarily those that are 'rich'.

Yes, ultimately the way forward in the sustainability issue in democratic countries is to make the personal choice of what we recognise as necessary, And when it comes down to it, what is materially necessary is only food, water and a roof over our heads.

The elimination of material wants above food, water and a roof over our heads should not be such a problem if our philosophies are in tune with nature, but such philosophy has become increasingly foreign to us as we are bombarded with messages from the media and as we have become more urbanised in character.

However, is it not better to make the choice of a simple life better now rather than wait for it to be forced onto us, or even for there to be no time left to make a choice?

Happiness, also, is now well known to come only from within. That being true, then a materially simplistic existence is the only 'must': the acquisition of 'things' will not provide happiness.

Vastly reducing our consumption of meat will also improve matters environmentally and - it must be noted - improve our health too: good self-maintenance will reduce our demand on health services.

Why not be happy therefore? When we are happy within the rest will properly sort itself out.

We can do it. We have to!

Treat the world as a two-day fair;

Treat life as a two-hour play;

Treat the body as a two-second bubble.

Thank you for reading this.