I wanted to sit down and write this enormous message for you because I don't express myself very coherently in real life sometimes; I am, after all, a bit of a goon really.
Nevertheless, even us goons have supportive friends and family, such as you are, that might care to read some nice sincere old message from the heart….and oh, I just read it through and it is quite the outpour.
It is going to be all about life, soul, and just, you know, acting decent about the whole climate change thang. Call me a silly hippy but I’m gunna be coming out with some uncharacteristically rational points here, I’d say. So Lardy da!
To begin at the beginning. I don't think that anything going on is worth despairing over because when all is said and done, everything’s just the remarkable truth so we better just love it all. The future people they will be lying in the bed we make for them, and even if the sea goes up and the Maldives sink underwater they’ll still be lots of fun to be had all over the world. I don’t think that climate change will define the future and at least we’ll still have our senses of humour.
But having said that, its certainly sounds like there will be a lot of broken hearts. We are right on track for getting all this desertification happening in Africa and the Amazon, storms escalating in the Caribbean, Australia forests going up in smoke, coastal floods washing away all peoples families in the extremely populated deltas in Asia and all the rest.. Masses and masses of people in the poor countries, who haven’t even made any emmisions, are going to have to put up with even more sad crying and dying and underdevelopment than they do now.
We all know, from what the vast majority of credible scientists keep saying, how miserable we’re going to make things unless we stop and do things differently. We've got to go and stabilise that warming effect to only 2 degrees or its bad news.
That is what I see as being the most stupid stupid part of it all really.
It just seems to me like lots of people over here (people who have had this climate change information hammered into them for years) are knowingly disregarding, on a day-to-day basis, the poor buggers who are going to get it right in the neck, 50 years down the line. And I just think we all need to sort our principles out.
Now hold your horses. I’m not saying that, for instance, by booking myself a seat on one short-haul flight I am rudely walloping some unfortunate Kenyan nomad with a big deadly drought. Not at all, because the plane will fly off regardless.
But the fact is that millions of us very well-off people, regularly turning a blind eye to connections like this, all at once…. it is properly starting to generate the first stages of the drought-walloping effect already. Kenya, for arguments sake, apparently used to be on a 10 year drought cycle, whereas now there have been 3 big ones since the millennium. That’s water scarcity, gang, and it’s combined with desperate farmers and their cattle nibbling away everything…and it means that in 2020 Africa might only be able to produce half the amount of crops that it does now. That’s the tragedy of the commons.
Oh snivel, I could continue panicking about the eventualities of climate catastrophe- (get ya flippers on fellas, cos, by the way, the coral reefs are all going to bleach and die!)- I could continue, but I’d have to go and look up some better stirring examples first, and it would only give us all the blues. Not the purpose of this essay!
The main thing I wanted to say here is that the sum of all our individual actions will determine what the extent of manmade global warming will be.
But you knew that already… So now for the main event!
Please come here and see this common justification for bad environmental practice:
“Me, I really care about the world, but me, I am just a little drop in the ocean…I alone can have no impact, nothing can be done. So I am going to, for example, jump in my car and drive around on a very regular basis. ”
Back in the day, I would have admitted that this was a very level-headed statement for low down, inconsequential blips like us.
But not any more! Not any more everybody. I am very pleased and I do declare that this attitude, as of New Years day, is no longer an accurate one! Because now we have a big opportunity to get together as the blips united! Or the 10:10 campaign, as it is actually known.
Yessirre, its all kicking off you know, that 10:10, it’s the best one around. I think that it has the potential to get a massive cross-section of the UK on board, ready to start rolling as a clever wave to speed up the whole process of going sustainable.
The whole thing is that you all put your names down on the website www.10:10uk.com to say that you will try and cut your carbon emissions by 10 per cent over the course of 2010. And that’s it really. What a sensible start, not radical or over-optimistic, and anybody who’s got their head screwed on right will want to join in.
So far there are 46,408 individuals on that thing, 1553 businesses, and 775 schools… all this even before the campaign has actually started!
The Tottenham Hotspurs, they signed up, they put the logo up on their big screen during their matches.
The entire cabinet of the government, they all signed up.
The Guardian.
The Sun newspaper
The Royal Mail
Kings College London
And many many more… including, intriguingly, Gillian McHeath the woman
who vacuums peoples bums out!
This commitment will appeal to a whole lot of people because there are, despite appearances, a massive amount of sensible people here in Britain. Looking through the dubious cross section of society that are my Facey-B friends, I reckon that about two thirds might sign up straightaway if the right person asked them to do it.
The fact that 10:10 is aimed specifically for next year is important because, at the moment, the governments they make all their emissions targets for 2050, do they not. They are bad boys!Bad Boys! That will be too late, too late and the window of opportunity will be long gone. The pivotal moment is right now, next year. I think it’s about 21 months that we’ve got or something like that.
You may be thinking, “oh what a load of old balls”, because even if the entire British population went completely carbon neutral, the impact would still be tiddly compared to the likes of the USA and China (who both produce a shocking 20% of the global emissions each by the way. We only make 2%).
Well, that would be very defeatist of you, you tedious bore. The campaign is only a year long, it will get the ball rolling, and anyway its got big plans to go international after this year. For now, if that prime minister can see a majority of people showing their support, it will mean he can make some brave decisions and the UK can show all those countries how it’s meant to be done. After all, it is certainly better than our other option - to carry on as per bloody usual. I don’t think our kids would be very proud of that in years to come. To be honest I just want to see lots of different people being heroes, showing some signs of life and getting some energy out of themselves. Never mind climate change, we could just go all out for the hell of it.
Right I’m on the verge of shutting up now if you could just keep reading for a little bit more. This is the only work I’ve done all term, show it your appreciation.
You must now please all go, go, go and sign the damn website, even if you don’t do anything else. That is the most important thing, sign the website and add to those numbers.
I also hope that maybe, now you know about 10:10, some of you will perhaps get FULL-ON KEEN about it all? Enthusiastic people will make or break the whole shebang, because its need lots of different types of people to attract lots of different types of supporters. I’m a flaky wally who probably comes across slightly self-righteous, what this operation needs is a touch of class! From proper respectable people like you.
Therefore, having signed the website, you could -
Actually go through with making your personal cuts
Try and convince your friends to do the same
Go to the “wave” climate march in London on the 5th December
Watch the Age of Stupid movie, because the 10:10 people directed it.
Show the Age of Stupid to your friends.
Consider trying to sign up any groups, schools or businesses you might be involved with.
Generally spread the word all over the place.
I’ll attach the proper 10:10 checklist of good energy saving tips to this email, but here are the obvious ones to remember:
Get on less aeroplanes to places. That is the most important one that could make the greatest difference if you are currently a regular flyer. If significantly less flights are booked, demand will go down, and less flights will be scheduled in the long run until there’s a less damaging way to fly.
Drive around less.
Turn your heating down, put on a jumper, and make your houses better insulated (you can even get a grant for that.)
Save electricity, unplug your chargers and don’t leave your stuff on standby mode. Only fill kettles up as much as you need. Replace dodgy fridges.
And that’s all folks.
I have written so much so I’m sorry about that. It took a whole week. Thank you for paying attention if you got this far I think that’s very nice of you! I just wanted to get it all out at once. and now I will never darken your doorstep again.
If you get on board, or have already done so ages ago, I hope you’ll send me a sign, I’d like to know who else I can go on about it with. Oh and if you can spot any gaping holes in my argument then I’d also want to hear about that… although any hardcore climate change sceptics that may still be reading should first consult the exclusive sceptics appendix I wrote just for you before you lay into me.
As for the rest of you,
“lets get together and feel all right”
So long!
Yours Sincerely,
Your old friend Jessie Barnard/ JB/Jessie Joops/Jessie Jonquil/ Jessies Barnyard/ Jessminda/ Mindy/ J-Bird/J-Hag/ J-Fag/ J-Slag/Beanie/Boom-Snag/ Bessy Jarnard/ Possej.
Peace out.
APPENDIX
Official Address to any climate change sceptics that may be out there.
Maybe you are correct Mr Smarty Pants, although probably not. Climate change, maybe it is just a natural cycle of endogenic and exothermic processes, and we should all stop fussing, not bother spending time and money going green, and instead concentrate on mitigating all the damage when it comes. If you turn out to be right you can ha ha ha right in my face
But only something like 1% of scientists think its climate change is not largely anthropogenic. So see here, if 99 doctors of a hundred told you about your deadly disease that you needed to fix, you wouldn’t risk trusting the one doctor who says you’ll be fine. Trust the scientists.
We’re running out of oil anyway aren’t we so lets just go green, which will be more economically sound in the long run. And create lots of nice new jobs. You can’t say it wouldn’t be better to run on sustainable energy.
And MOST of all:
Oh, let’s just do a big exciting change in the name of fun. If its all for nothing, if we’ve all got the wrong end of the stick, big deal. it will be historical and life affirming to see people doing big things out of compassion for the next generation. Are you a man or a mouse.
