Monday, December 13, 2010

Not More Raving About Environmentalists

I have just received my latest electricity bill which was thoughtfully printed on recycled paper. They do this because they care about the environment. The electricity they provide is largely generated by burning immense quantities of coal in a huge power station but my provider sends me my bill on recycled paper. Methinks somebody is taking the piss.

I would prefer it if those in highly polluting industries gloried in their environmental unfriendliness rather than making weaselly attempts to pretend they care. Electricity companies should send their bills out written in octopus ink on baby panda hide. Now that would be a bill worth receiving. Electricity bills would become sought after collectibles, particularly after we ran out of pandas (patience Neil, any day now).

Electricity amazes me; I flick the switch and the lights come on. Or to be more accurate, the lights don't come on but they would if I bought some more light bulbs. Still the thought that illumination is a simple trip to the hardware store away is something I find very impressive. It is easy to take the miracles of modern civilisation for granted until one visits a country where the shit just sits in the street rather than being flushed invisibly away. Anywhere that a dentist doesn't actually have to tie his patients to the chair is definitely on its way to civilisation.

The ability to light up the darkness is surely worth the occasional flayed panda. I think so but many people don't. They look at inkless octopi and cherry red pandas and they feel disgusted and ashamed. They have a point of course, the miracles of modern civilisation do tend to have some unfortunate by products. Pollution, mess, extinctions, environmentalists the list goes on. And so do I.

Our world has become somewhat grotty and there are certainly fewer animals and plants around than there used to be although personally I think some of them have just gone into hiding to avoid being bothered by David Attenborough. Still mess there is, modern civilisation has created so much mess that probably the only thing that will save the world is modern civilisation. Eating recycled tyres and wearing carbon neutral clothing are all very well but realistically we can't expect everyone to be an idiot. For a true global clean up we will need to deploy the resources of our civilisation in a concerted effort at tidiness. Or to put it another way, somebody is going to have to make money out of it. Some people already are of course and many more are making money out of pretending to solve the problem and then sticking the gullible with a huge bill. In Australia we call that a solar power rebate.

Nevertheless more and more companies are getting interested in solving the problems our civilisation has created. To be more specific more and more companies are getting interesting in making money from the problems our civilisation has created. I am utterly confident that in the fullness of time they will solve all the current problems if only by accident. I am equally confident that they will create a whole bunch of new problems that we will only recognise when future generations of environmentalists draw our attention to them. Possibly in a century's time we will all be dining fat on whale meat and the cow will be an endangered species. It would cheer up my dotage no end to see earnest young things waving placards to preserve the life of animals they could have picked up for a couple of bucks in McDonalds in my youth.

I am rather ambivalent towards environmentalists. On the one hand I rather hope they do succeed in saving whales, rainforests, lions and so forth. Those things look so good on nature documentaries. In the future when they're campaigning to save the cow it just won't be the same. Can you imagine David Attenborough standing in a field commenting on the magnificence of the aberdeen angus in hushed and reverent tones? So can I actually but most won't bother. If environmentalists really wanted to save the world they would start working for major corporations with an interest in cleaning the planet up, or start one. Greenpeace could have been a Fortune 500 company by now if they had gone about it the right way. There is nothing wrong with getting rich while you save the world. In fact its probably the only way the world will get saved.

Still, I suspect, many environmentalists secretly love the idea of being outsiders railing against our civilisation rather than part of the entire faceless conglomerate that produced the society which, incidentally, produced them. Two centuries ago we didn't have environmentalists. Two centuries before that and the only contact anyone had with the environment was in beating a part of it to death so they could eat it. Make no mistake; environmentalists are the bastard children of the industrial revolution. Without it there wouldn't any environmentalists and not much civilisation either. Now if you will excuse me I have to draft a stern letter to my electricity provider. Where did I leave my panda pad?

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