Environmental Musings
Vega
Hugh and Annie
Wed 25 Sep 2019 06:24
Indonesia is in the news again. This time it is the impact of fires and the haze and particulates produced. By presidential decree all primary forest in Indonesia is now protected from clearance but secondary forest and crop plants are burnt during the dry season and the result is a haze that hangs over the islands and particulates that are giving rise to health issues. There are fires on every island we visit and at Riung on Flores we watched the orange flames spreading across the hillside above our anchorage at night. One yacht couldn’t enter an anchorage on Sumbawa as it was completely obscured by smoke.
Recently we visited villages that were, as ever, a joy with us being given a rapturous welcome. The colourful flags and bunting, dazzling traditional costumes, brightly coloured headscarves worn by the women, bubbling enthusiasm and wish to pose for “selfies” with the motley group of visiting yachties make for a vibrant, exciting and almost overwhelming experience. I must admit to being surprised at the self confident exuberance of the women, old and young alike, despite the undertones of patriarchal control that the headscarves and writings of the Qur’an (as we have been told) represent.
On these village visits there is a constant reminder of one hot topic amongst the yachties - plastic. It is absolutely everywhere here. One island is very diligent about providing collection facilities before dumping the rubbish in the sea! Everywhere is strewn with plastic and in one village we were taken to a house built on a hillside platform cut into a huge mound of soil and plastic. We are forever being offered water in plastic bottles or sealed cups that require a plastic straw to penetrate the film lid.
Many in the fleet are taking steps to reduce plastic use and some are quite vocal in encouraging everyone to do the same. This has raised the issue of how best to approach the subject. People are generally reluctant to be told how to live their lives by others. Is it right to be telling the locals here not to burn their forests or discard their plastic waste? Their outlook on life may be very different to ours and they may well feel that climate change has a lot more to do with western industrialisation than eastern crop burning.
An interesting article on the BBC news web site asks whether individual actions to combat climate change are at all effective. On their own the answer is of course no. Collectively they could be effective but how do you instill a collective ethos? And we can only make choices between the options given to us which is why leadership from government and business is so important.
Donald Trump is relaxing protections given to land in the US to enable the case for commercial development on that land to be made. This includes sites that are of world importance for habitat and diversity. Trump is also preventing US states such as California from having car emissions regulations more rigorous than those set by the federal government. This to facilitate cheaper car production and to encourage more cars to be built and sold. As Trump has tweeted “JOBS, JOBS, JOBS”. In a similar vein the Australian government is keen to expand coal extraction with all that implies for the land affected and global warming. Japan is keen to burn the Australian coal. It has been pointed out that the rugby World Cup (in Japan) comprises teams from the industrialised world that is causing global warming and the non industrial world that is suffering the consequences. In response to concern from the Pacific islands such as Tonga and Fiji that rising sea levels are threatening their future the Australian government has said that they should be grateful that the populations of these islands can still come to Australia and pick its fruit (I kid you not). Saudi Arabia has vetoed any support from the international community for the measures recommended by the scientists on the ICCC who say that we have less than 10 years to take steps to prevent what will otherwise be irreversible and harmful impacts. The Saudis have begrudgingly allowed the world community to go no further than acknowledge that the work of the ICCC is “the best available evidence”. Brazil’s right wing populist government is now actively encouraging burning of the Amazon rainforest. The UK has, as the government likes to keep reminding us, put in place one of the most stringent carbon reduction targets in the world. What it is less keen to tell us is that it has put virtually no measures in place to ensure we have the slightest chance of meeting this target.
This is the background to the UN inter-governmental environmental summit that may be the last chance for governments to agree something meaningful in response to climate change. Given the background and the fact that since agreeing five years ago to stop the destruction of primary rainforest those countries signing up have seen an increase in the rate of deforestation, I for one am not holding my breath.
So, what can we do? Well, one interesting thought to come out of the BBC article is that every individual has a moral obligation not to do anything that could harm the wellbeing of others. You could have applied this principle to most actions throughout history but, in relation to climate change, it raises an interesting perspective. Every time you, for example, drive your car you are doing something that will harm life for those in the future.
Everything is relative of course and comparisons will always be made between differing individual perspectives when making choices. By flying to break up our sailing time away from home we are choosing to damage the environment for personal gain. By using plastic we are knowingly damaging the environment. Making choices to reduce impact may be quite hard - those in a position to do so must make those choices easier.