SPRING has officially sprung and we have had a few days of magic. The sun has shone and made me appreciate, a little more than usual, the wonderfulness of nature.
With the trees beginning to have blossom and birds and bees doing what they do best, our glorious country felt just a little bit more fabulous. I wonder if I appreciated it a little bit more because the environment has become the latest hot topic, quite literally.
With tens of thousands of environmental protesters blocking roads and Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish activist, holding us all accountable for messing up her world, I have been made to think about my part in reducing transport emissions that cause global warming.
With predictions of a 6C increase in temperatures by the end of this century, unless we do something now, the consequences of doing nothing are enormous.
Huge swathes of land will be lost to the sea as the ice melts and species, including humans, will die. People will die due in part to deliberate acts by global powers. Presidents denying that climate change is real do not help.
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Governments accepting the science but doing little that makes a difference do not help. Oil firms rebranding as sustainable, 100 per cent renewable energy companies do not help, either, in my opinion.
We are being lied to on a scale that replicates the smoking industry of the 50s and 60s. Smoking killed. Governments and tobacco companies knew but denied and lied.
We didn’t have the internet then. We had less information that we could refer to and understand. Now there is no excuse. We know what transport is doing to us, our children and our planet.
We are choosing to kill ourselves. My mum died five years ago of lung cancer after a life of smoking between 40 and 60 cigarettes a day. She knew it could kill her but she felt she couldn’t stop.
We are doing the same to ourselves with our dirty transport and deadly emissions. We will kill ourselves unless massive change, at pace, is actually delivered. It’s time for change.
