I am one of those people who likes to know what is going on around the world so I read, listen to or watch the news each day. I have a particular interest in environmental issues and the welfare of the peoples of the world and see how these two areas are intrinsically linked. When you consider the many different ways people barely survive in the world today whilst trying to accommodate to the speed of change in their environment, the natural world simply cannot adapt quickly enough without losing species. Latest figures, 60% loss of the world’s natural species in my lifetime (and I’m not as old as Steve!). In recent weeks there have been a number of reports about global warming, species & habitat loss and a whole variety of depressing news for the natural world. These reports made me think further with the thought of what are world leaders doing to try and address these issues so we can literally; save our planet.
When you look at the worlds political stage today, it appears to be extremely worrying with several big powerful nations having leaders whose environmental records are appalling.
And if I look back over the last few years here in the UK, it looks equally as bad as this small nation with a large population looks like it will continue to lose numbers of species in the forthcoming years.
This loss of species could well be coupled with further land changes, say as a result of floods and rising sea levels, which could affect the species present and possibly damage buildings, roads and many other human settlements. When I first became aware of the global warming crisis nearly 40 years ago many of these things were predicted as likely to happen. Now these things are an actuality and still the world leaders seem to want to kill off the human race by continuing with practices that further damage our planet.
Here in the UK the government seem to belittle the environment and the scientific evidence that proves the serious problems within the environment and the associated species that need them in order to survive. As one of the most comfortable and allegedly most democratic countries in the world and who’s known love of animals, in recent times more knowledge of the needs of our decreasing wildlife are also largely being ignored.
I can highlight this with a point that I was actually involved with recently. When I say I was involved with this you had better note that so were 61,000 other people! This as a result of a petition we all signed asking Michael Gove to revoke the licence he had given some farmers to shoot Ravens, a species that has only just recovered from persecution and started breeding in parts of the UK where it had been absent for over 150 years!
Leaving the argument to one side for the moment, the petition has been sent to Natural England who are the government department that deal with environmental issues of this kind but they themselves, as an organisation, have been decimated as result of major cuts extending back over the last 20 years!
When I last checked the online petition the other day the number of people who had signed the petition had risen to nearly 64,000 and still there had been no response from Natural England. When you look at it, it doesn’t seem very democratic and it seems the wishes of 64,000 people are being ignored by their own government. If you look a little closer we see further evidence of how little this government does to try and deal with serious environmental issues. Since 2010 the budget for Natural England has been cut by 50% and their workforce has been massively reduced with many of the workers now being seconded to work on the mess they call Brexit. We are living in very troubled times.
I’ve been highly frustrated by government decisions when dealing with environmental issues for many years and despite my example of the problems it seems that there has been some awakening within the people to tell the government that they are seriously worried about the wildlife and the environment in general. I know I’m repeating myself when I ask everybody to get involved by telling your MP and signing petitions to try and stop the collision course our planet seems to be on, by expressing your worries to the politicians and hopefully they may start to listen to us.
Francis